The Project Gutenberg eBook of Legends of Loudoun, by Harrison Williams.

Many causes have contributed to the great upsurge of interest now manifesting itself in Virginia's romantic history and in the men and women who made it. If, perhaps, the greatest and most potent of these forces is the splendid restoration of Williamsburg, her colonial capital, through the munificence of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., of New York, we must not lose sight of the part played by the reconstruction of her old historic highways and their tributary roads into the fine modern highway system which is today the Commonwealth's boast and pride; the systematic and constructive activities of the Virginia Commission of Conservation and Development of which the present chairman is the Hon. Wilbur C. Hall of Loudoun; and the excellent work done by the Garden Club of Virginia in holding its annual Garden Week celebration in each spring and the generous permission it obtains, from so many of the present owners of Virginia's historic old homes and gardens, for the public to visit and inspect them at that time and thus capture, if but for the moment, a sense of personal unity with Virginia's glamourous past.

The increasing flow of visitors to Loudoun and to Leesburg, its county seat, has developed a steadily growing demand for more information concerning the County's past and its charming old homes than has been available in readily accessible form. These visitors, in their quest, usually call at Leesburg's beautiful Thomas Balch Library which, during Garden Week, lends its facilities to Virginia's Garden Clubs for their Loudoun headquarters; and Miss Rebecca Harrison, its Librarian, has upon occasion found the lack of published information in convenient form somewhat a handicap in her always gracious efforts to welcome and inform our growing tide of visitors. Knowing as she did my lifelong interest in Colonial history and the lives and family stories of the men and women who enacted their parts therein (my sole qualification, if such in charity it may be called, for such a task) she, from time to time, had suggested that I prepare a book upon Loudoun, the people who built up the County and the old homes which they erected and in which[viii] they lived. The present volume has been written in an effort to respond to those requests. When some four years ago the work was contemplated, it was proposed to make it primarily a small, informal guidebook to Loudoun's older homes; but as my research into her earlier days progressed, I became deeply conscious that the people of Loudoun have forgotten much of her past that tenaciously and loyally should be remembered; and so the story of the County almost crowded out, beyond expectation, the story of the homes. It is hoped that, sometime in the future, another book pertaining wholly to these old plantations and their owners may be prepared and published.

Although there has been no very recent book devoted to her history, Loudoun has had her historians within and without her boundaries and, above all, has been fortunate in attracting the interest of that outstanding scholar and historian of the Northern Neck, the late Fairfax Harrison, Esq., whose beautiful country-seat of Belvoir is near by in the adjoining county of Fauquier. As the most casual reader of the following pages will quickly recognize, I have been under constant obligation, in the preparation of this work, to these earlier writers and can but here sincerely acknowledge the help I have derived from them.

The first published history of Loudoun was written by Yardley Taylor, a Quaker of the upper country, prior to 1853 in which year it made its printed appearance. With it was published a map of the County prepared by him (for his vocation was that of a land-surveyor) and both map and book are highly creditable to their author. The book, however, is not very large and, concerning itself somewhat extensively with the topography, geology, etc. of the County, it has less to say of Loudoun's history than its admirers could wish. The map, embellished with cartouches of old buildings, was the first county map to be prepared in this part of Virginia and so accurate was it found to be that it was used by both Federals and Confederates in the devastating War Between the States. That war, with its aftermath, set back the cultural activities of Virginia for a full generation; thus it was not until 1909 that the next Loudoun history appears, this time by Mr. James W. Head of Leesburg.[ix] His volume is more comprehensive than Mr. Taylor's but, again, it covers far more than the County's history, including carefully prepared surveys of its minerals, soils, farm statistics, commercial activities, and many other interesting and closely related subjects. In 1926 Messrs. Patrick A. Deck and Henry Heaton published their Economic and Social Survey of Loudoun County which is somewhat similar in its scope to the work of Mr. Head but not so large a volume. In the meanwhile, however, in 1924, Mr. Fairfax Harrison, himself a scion of the Fairfax family, had privately published his comprehensive Landmarks of Old Prince William covering the early history of all the territory originally comprised in old Prince William County; and thereby built an enduring monument to his own erudition and industry that will stand as long as there remains a man or woman who retains an interest in the fairest part of the princely Colepeper-Fairfax Proprietary. It remains a pleasant and grateful memory that I had the benefit of Mr. Harrison's personal suggestions and advice, as well as access to the overflowing treasury of his published writings, in my preparation of this volume.

In addition to the authors named, much help was derived from Mr. John Alexander Binns' treatise on his agricultural experiments, from the war-books of Major General Henry Lee, Col. John S. Mosby, Col. E. V. White, Rev. J. J. Williamson, Captain F. M. Myers and Mr. Briscoe Goodhart, although in the case of the two latter authors their writings are measurably impaired by the rancour which controlled their pens. Dr. E. G. Swem's Virginia Historical Index was of constant assistance as were the publications of the Virginia Historical Society, those of the College of William and Mary and similar historical magazines as well as Virginia's Colonial records and the records of Loudoun County. The resources of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution and those of our little Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg have all been available to me. In short, I had intended to append a bibliography of volumes consulted and relied upon for many of the views hereafter expressed; but when those volumes grew in number to five or six hundred I realized that limited space would permit no such project. Therefore[x] I have contented myself with frequently indicating in footnotes the principal sources from which my information has been derived.

To my acknowledgment of aid obtained from books, pamphlets, newspapers and magazines, official records and documents, must be added my appreciation of the help of many friends. Mr. Thomas M. Fendall of Morrisworth and Leesburg, of distinguished Virginia background himself, has made such careful and comprehensive studies of Loudoun's past that he was and is the logical prospective author of a book thereon; but his modesty equals his industry and scholarship to the very obvious loss, in this instance, to the County and its people. From him I have had such constant and constructive assistance and cheerful response to my frequent appeals that without his aid this book could not have attained its present form. To Loudoun's present County Clerk Mr. Edward O. Russell and to his deputy Miss Nellie Hammerley; to Mrs. John Mason; Mrs. E. B. White and Miss Elizabeth White of Selma; Mrs. Frederick Page; the Rev. G. Peyton Craighill, the present Rector of Shelburne Parish; the Rev. J. S. Montgomery; Miss Lilias Janney; Judge and Mrs. J. R. H. Alexander of Springwood; Mrs. Ashby Chancellor; Mrs. John D. Moore; Mr. Frank C. Littleton of Oak Hill, and his long studies of the history of that estate and of President Monroe; Trial Justice William A. Metzger; Mr. J. Ross Lintner, Loudoun's County Agent; Hon. Charles F. Harrison, Commonwealth's Attorney; Mr. Oscar L. Emerick, Superintendent of Schools, for permission to use the map of the County prepared by him; Mr. E. Marshall Rust; Mr. George Carter; Hon. Wilbur C. Hall and his efficient official staff; Mr. Valta Palma, Curator of the Rare Book Collection of the Library of Congress, and Mr. Hirst Milhollen of the Fine Arts Division of the same great institution; Mr. John T. Loomis, Managing Director of Loudermilk and Co. of Washington, as well as to very many others, my sincere thanks are again tendered for the valuable help they all so willingly have given me.

The illustrations used to embellish the text deserve a word of comment. The portrait of the Right Honourable John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun, Captain-General of the British forces in America and Governor-in-Chief of Virginia, in whose honour the County of[xi] Loudoun was named, is reproduced from an engraving that appeared in the London Magazine of October, 1757, when Loudoun was at the height of his career. It was copied from the engraving by Charles Spooner of an earlier painting of the Earl by the Scotch artist Allan Ramsay (1713-1784), who later became the principal portrait painter to King George III and his court. I have in my collection two copies of this London Magazine engraving, one of which I found in the hands of a dealer in New York and the other in London. No other copies, so far as I can learn, have recently been offered for sale.

The fine portrait of the Right Honourable William Petty-FitzMaurice, Earl of Shelburne and 1st Marquess of Landsdowne, for whom Shelburne Parish was named, is by Sir Joshua Reynolds and is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London to which it was presented by his son Henry, 3rd Marquess of Landsdowne, K. G., in June, 1858. I obtained an official photograph of this painting at the National Portrait Gallery in the summer of 1937, and permission to reproduce it in this book.

The portrait of Sir Peter Halkett, Baronet, of Pitfiranie, Scotland, who commanded that part of Braddock's army that passed through the present Loudoun on its way to the fatal battle near Fort DuQuesne, is from P. McArdell's engraving of the portrait painted by Allan Ramsay in 1740, and is considered by me one of my most fortunate discoveries.

The pictures of Oak Hill in the body of the book and that of the meeting of the Middleburg Hunt on its spacious lawns, reproduced on the dust-jacket, are from the extensive collections of Mr. Frank C. Littleton. The original of the portrait of General George Rust of Rockland (1788-1857), builder of that cherished family seat in 1822, belongs to and is in the possession of a grandson, Mr. John Y. Rust of San Angelo, Texas, but a carefully executed copy hangs on Rockland's walls. During the two administrations of President Andrew Jackson, General Rust was in command of the United States Arsenal at nearby Harper's Ferry and for many years he was one of the most respected and influential of the County's citizens. The photograph of the original portrait herein used I owe to another grandson,[xii] Mr. E. Marshall Rust of Leesburg and Washington, as I do the picture of Rockland itself and that of the old John Janney residence in Leesburg, later so long the home of the late Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. Edwards, the latter a sister of Mr. Rust. They were all photographed in this masterly fashion by Miss Frances Benjamin Johnston of Washington. The pictures of Foxcroft, Oak Hill and the old Valley Bank in Leesburg are from the Pictorial Archives of Early American Architecture in the Division of Fine Arts of the Library of Congress and the negatives are also the work of Miss Johnston.

Reproduction of the portrait of Nicholas Cresswell, the Journalist, is due to the courtesy of the Dial Press, of New York, publishers of the American edition of his journal. The original portrait is owned by Mr. Samuel Thorneley of Drayton House, near Chichester, West Sussex, England, a descendant of Cresswell's younger brother, Joseph Cresswell. The map of Loudoun is based on that prepared by Mr. Oscar L. Emerick in 1923, and is used by his kind permission.

ILLUSTRATIONS

LEGENDS OF LOUDOUN

CHAPTER I

THE EARLIER INDIANS

The county of Loudoun, as now constituted, is an area of 525 square miles, lying in the extreme northwesterly corner of Virginia, in that part of the Old Dominion known as the Piedmont and of very irregular shape, its upper apex formed by the Potomac River on the northeast and the Blue Ridge Mountains on the northwest, pointing northerly. It is a region of equable climate, with a mean temperature of from 50 to 55 degrees, seldom falling in winter below fahrenheit zero nor rising above the upper nineties during its long summer, thus giving a plant-growing season of about two hundred days in each year.

The county exhibits the typical topography of a true piedmont, a rolling and undulating land broken by numerous streams and traversed by four hill-ranges—the Catoctin, the Bull Run and the Blue Ridge mountains and the so-called Short Hills. These ranges are of a ridge-like character, with no outstanding peaks, although occasionally producing well-rounded, cone-like points. The whole area is generously well watered not only by the Potomac, flowing for thirty-seven miles on its border and the latter's tributary Goose Creek crossing the southern portion of the county, but also by many smaller creeks or, as they are locally called, "runs"; and by such innumerable springs of most excellent potable water that few, if any, of the farm-fields lack a natural water supply for livestock. These conditions most happily combine to create a climate that for healthfulness and all year comfortable living is without peer on the eastern seaboard and, indeed, truthfully may be said to be among the best and most enjoyable east of the Mississippi.

Before the advent of the white man, the land was covered by a dense forest of oak, hickory, walnut, sycamore, locust, ash, pine, maple, poplar and other varieties of trees—not by any means unbroken, for here and there the Indian tribes that roamed the area, had burned out great clearings for grazing-grounds to entice the wild animals they hunted and in which the native grasses then quickly and indigenously sprang up; attracting particularly the buffalo, in[2] those days, and at least until as late as 1730, to be found in vast numbers all through the Piedmont region and always in the forefront as an unending supply of flesh-food to their Indian hunters. With the buffalo were great herds of "red and fallow deer" and wolves, foxes in abundance, bears in the mountains, opossum, racoons, and, along the streams, otter and beaver (later to be so greatly valued for their pelts) and whose presence, with that of other fur-bearing animals, was to have its influence on the history of the region.

When in 1607 the doughty Captain John Smith—in writing of any part of Virginia one sooner or later is certain to shake hands with that amourous hero—when Captain Smith made his first voyage to Virginia and came in contact with her aboriginees, the latter were, in a broad sense, of several stocks or nations, distinguishable principally by linguistic affinity and more or less common cultural idiosyncracies rather than by close alliances; and indeed frequently appearing to cherish their bitterest enmities among their own blood-kindred. Along the coast, in what we now know as Tidewater, the territory running from the Chesapeake to those rocky outcrops making waterfalls in all the great rivers flowing from Virginia into the Bay, the Indians were generally of the Algonquin stock, a tribe covering an enormous territory along the Atlantic seaboard from the neighborhood of Hudson's Bay southerly to at least the Carolinas but by no means monopolizing the regions where they were found.

To the north, in what is now New York, centred the Iroquoian tribes, with ramifications as far south as Virginia and North Carolina. Among these more southerly Indians of the Iroquoian stock were the fierce and powerful "Susquehannocks" along the river we still call by that name who later were to play a prominent rôle in our Loudoun yet to be; the Nottoways, occupying a part of southeastern Virginia; the Cherokees, occupying the area in Virginia and North Carolina west of the Blue Ridge, extending north as far as the Peaks of Otter near the headquarters of the James; and the Tuskaroras of famous and bloody memory, who were paramount in North Carolina until their conquest and all but annihilation by the English in[3] 1711. What were left of the fiercest and most implacable of the Tuskaroras after that crushing defeat, retreated to New York where, as the sixth nation they joined the Iroquois Confederacy of their near kinsmen of the Long House. A few of the more friendly were removed to a local reservation in 1717 but gradually, in small parties, says Mooney, they too moved to join their kindred in the north.

Both Algonquins and Iroquois were to be classed as barbarians rather than savages. The former have been described as having generally "found locations in permanent villages surrounded by extensive cornfields. They were primarily agriculturists or fishermen, to whom hunting was hardly more than a pastime and who followed the chase as a serious business only in the interval between the gathering of one crop and the sowing of the next." The Iroquois, who found their highest development in their confederacy of the Five Nations of the Long House in central New York (the Massawomecks so dreaded by the Powhattans and Manahoacs of Smith's narratives) were even further advanced. Described by historians as the Romans of America, they led all other Indians of what is now the United States in their powers of organization and extraordinary political development. They lived in cleverly and strongly palisaded villages and their agricultural activities, falling to the women's share of tribal work, were probably further advanced than those of any other Indians north of Mexico. Our earliest knowledge places them on the banks of the St. Lawrence, in the neighborhood of the present Montreal, whence they were driven by the neighboring Algonquins. Their defeat and expulsion to the south bred in them a deep determination for revenge. In the New York wilderness they developed and cultivated a passion for ruthless warfare and forming their famous Confederation somewhere about the year 1570, they rapidly became the most powerful Indian military force east of the Mississippi and a sombre threat and terror to the other Indian tribes far and wide.

In contrast to both Algonquins and Iroquois, the Siouan tribes who ranged the Piedmont country from the Potomac south, were primarily nomads—and nomads, observes Mooney, have short histories.[4] Modern scholarship inclines to place the origin of the great Siouan or Dakotan family possibly amidst the eastern foothills of the southern Alleghanies or at least as far east as Ohio, whence, after a long period, they probably were driven by the Iroquois and other enemies beyond the Mississippi. Being essentially nomadic, without permanent villages and relying on constant hunting for their food, following their game wherever it might lead, they necessarily ranged widely and covered broad areas. From the days of the earliest European invasion, locations of the Iroquois and Algonquin stock were known, but as the earliest English scouts and adventurers found no such long established villages in the Piedmont country, their tendency and following them, that of the early writers and historians, was to loosely assume that the Indians found there were, in common with their neighbours, either Algonquins or Iroquois. Later antiquarians and ethnologists seem to have followed their lead; with an exasperating paucity of record, tradition or material remains, there was but little on which to base knowledge of language, whence racial stock might be deduced. It was not until Horatio Hale announced, sixty years ago, his discovery of a Siouan language bordering the Atlantic coast and James Mooney, in 1894, published his Siouan Tribes of the East that these Indians of the northern Virginia Piedmont, known to be members of the Manahoac Confederacy, were identified as of the Siouan stock. They "consisted of perhaps a dozen tribes of which the names of eight have been preserved. With the exception of the Stegarake," writes Mooney, "all that is known of these was recorded by Smith, whose own acquaintance with them seems to have been limited to an encounter with a large hunting party in 1608."

As Smith's narrative, after its wont, paints a vivid picture of the Manahoacs, a picture which almost stands alone in the mist of conjecture and deductive reasoning making up what is left to us of them, it is well to quote it in full, bearing always in mind that while these people were found on the upper Rappahannock, we have excellent reason to believe that they also occupied all the land now within the bounds of Loudoun. As allied bands, without fixed[5] habitation, they wandered over the lands between Tidewater and the Blue Ridge, from the James to the Potomac.

The story is contained in Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia which states on its title page to be "by Captaine John Smith sometymes Governor in those Countryes & Admirall of New England." Chapter VI of the book, from which we quote, is however apparently signed by Anthony Bagnall, Nathaniel Powell and Anas Todhill who were three of Smith's companions on this adventure. Bagnall and Powell were among the six listed as "Gentlemen" in distinction to an additional six listed as "Souldiers," among the latter being Todhill.

On the 24th July, 1608, Smith and these twelve men set out on this second voyage of discovery along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Going as far north as the head of the Bay and the "Susquesahannock's" river and noting their many findings, they eventually, upon their return south, came to "the discovery of this river some call Rapahanock" up which they proceeded, with occasional brushes with the Indians along its banks. On their third day upon the river

"Wee sailed so high as our Boat would float, there setting up crosses, and graving our names in the trees. Our Sentinell saw an arrowe fall by him, though he had ranged up and downe more than an houre in digging in the earth, looking of stones, herbs, and springs, not seeing where a Salvage could well hide himselfe.

"Upon the alarum by that we had recovered our armes, there was about an hundred nimble Indians skipping from tree to tree, letting fly their arrows so fast as they could: the trees here served us for Baricadoes as well as they. But Mosco (their Indian guide) did us more service than we expected, for having shot away his quiver of Arrowes, he ran to the Boat for more. The Arrowes of Mosco at the first made them pause upon the matter, thinking by his bruit and skipping, there were many Salvages. About halfe an houre this continued, then they all vanished as suddenly as they approached. Mosco followed them so farre as he could see us, till they were out of sight. As we returned there lay a Salvage as dead, shot in the[6] knee, but taking him up we found he had life, which Mosco seeing, never was Dog more furious against a Beare, than Mosco was to have beat out his braines, so we had him to our Boat, where our Chirugian who went with us to cure our Captaines hurt of the Stingray, so dressed this Salvage that within an houre after he looked somewhat chearefully, and did eat and speake. In the meane time we contented Mosco in helping him to gather up their arrowes, which were an armefull, whereby he gloried not a little. Then we desired Mosco to know what he was, and what Countries were beyond the mountaines; the poore Salvage mildly answered he and all with him were of Hassinninga, where there are three Kings more like unto them, namely the King of Stegora, the King of Tauxuntania and the King of Shakahonea, that were coming to Mohaskahod, which is onely a hunting Towne, and the bounds betwixt the Kingdom of the Mannahocks, and the Nantaughtacunds, but hard by where we were. We demanded why they came in that manner to betray us, that came to them in peace, and to seeke their loves; he answered they heard we were a people come from under the world, to take their world from them. We asked him how many worlds he did know, he replyed, he knew no more than that which was under the skie that covered him, which were the Powhattans, with the Monacans, and the Massawomecks, that were higher up in the mountaines. Then we asked him what was beyond the mountaines, he answered the Sunne: but of anything els he knew nothing; because the woods were not burnt. These and many such questions we demanded, concerning the Massawomecks, the Monacans, their owne Country, and where were the Kings of Stegora, Tauxintania, and the rest. The Monacans he said were their neighbours and friends, and did dwell as they in the hilly Countries by small rivers, living upon rootes and fruits, but chiefly by hunting. The Massawomecks did dwell upon a great water and had many boats, & so many men that they made warre with all the world. For their Kings, they were gone every one a severall way with their men on hunting: But those with him came thither a fishing until they saw us, notwithstanding they would be altogether at night at Mahaskahod. For his relation we gave him many toyes, with perswasions to go with[7] us, and he as earnestly desired us to stay the coming of those Kings that for his good usage should be friends with us, for he was brother to Hassinninga. But Mosco advised us presently to be gone, for they were all naught, yet we told him we would not till it was night. All things we made ready to entertain what came, & Mosco was as dilligent in trimming his arrowes. The night being come we all imbarked, for the river was so narrow, had it biene light the land on the one side was so high, they might have done us exceeding much mischiefe. All this while the K. of Hassinninga was seeking the rest, and had consultation a good time what to doe. But by their espies seeing we were gone, it was not long before we heard their arrowes dropping on every side the Boat; we caused our Salvage to call unto them, but such a yelling and hallowing they made that they heard nothing but now and then a peece, ayming for neere as we could where we heard the most voyces. More than 12 miles they followed us in this manner; then the day appearing, we found ourselves in a broad Bay, out of danger of their shot, where we came to an anchor, and fell to breakfast. Not so much as speaking to them till the Sunne was risen; being well refreshed, we untyed our Targets [1] that covered us as a Deck, and all shewed ourselves with these shields on our armes, and swords in our hands, and also our prisoner Amoroleck; a long discourse there was betwixt his countrimen and him, how good we were, how well wee used him, how we had a Patawomeck with us, loved us as his life, that would have slaine him had we not preserved him, and that he should have his liberty would they be but friends; and to doe us any hurt it was impossible. Upon this they all hung their Bowes and Quivers upon the trees, and one came swimming aboard us with a Bow tyed on his head, and another with a Quiver of Arrowes, which they delivered to our Captaine as a present, the Captaine having used them so kindly as he could, told them the other three Kings should doe the like, and then the great King of our world should be their friend, whose men we were. It was no sooner demanded than performed, so upon a low Moorish poynt of Land we went to the Shore, where[8] those foure Kings came and received Amoroleck: nothing they had but Bowes, Arrowes, Tobacco-bags, and Pipes: what we desired, none refused to give us, wondering at every thing we had, and heard we had done: our Pistols they tooke for pipes, which they much desired, but we did content them with other Commodities, and so we left foure or five hundred of our merry Mannahocks, singing, dancing, and making merry and set sayle for Moraughtacund."

The spelling, punctuation and capitalization follow the text of the first edition (1624) in which, opposite page 41, is a map shewing apparently the Manahoacs (there spelled "Mannahoacks") in possession of the present Loudoun and the Monacans south of them, around the upper waters of the James.

With Smith's return to the mouth of the Rappahannock the mist descends again upon Loudoun for many years.

In 1669 and 1670, John Lederer made three journeys into the interior of Virginia. His first journey took him up the York River; his second, up the James; and the route of his third he describes as "from the Falls of the Rappahannock River to the top of the Apalataen Mountains." Although he obtained the consent of Sir William Berkeley before making his explorations, he seems to have incurred the ill-will of the Virginians themselves and by them was forced to flee to Maryland. There he met Sir William Talbot, who sympathized with and befriended him and translated his story of his travels from the latin in which it had been written. It was published in London in 1672 with a "foreword" by Talbot in Lederer's defense.

Of the "Indians then Inhabiting the western parts of Carolina and Virginia," Lederer says:

"The Indians now seated in these parts are none of those which the English removed from Virginia, but a people driven by the Enemy from the northwest, and invited to sit down here by an Oracle above four hundred years since, as they pretend for the ancient inhabitants of Virginia were far more rude and barbarous,[9] feeding only upon raw flesh and fish, until they taught them to plant corn, and shewed them the use of it."

Concerning the whole Piedmont region, called by Lederer "The Highlands" he writes:

"These parts were formerly possessed by the Tacci, alias Dogi, but they are extinct and the Indians now seated here, are distinguished into the several nations of Mahoc, Nuntaneuck, alias Nuntaly, Nahyssan, Sapon, Managog, Mangoack, Akernatatzy and Monakin &c. One language is common to them all, though they differ in dialects. The parts inhabited here are pleasant and fruitful because cleared of wood and laid open to the Sun."

Apparently in Lederer's "Monakins" and "Mangoacks" we may recognize Smith's "Monacans" and "Mannahocks" or "Mannahoacks"; but on his third or Rappahannock journey he does not speak of such Indians as he may have actually met. James Mooney thinks that by that time the Manahoacs may have been driven out of their earlier hunting grounds. The "Tacci, alias Dogi" described by Lederer are suggested by Mooney to have been only a mythic people, a race of monsters or unnatural beings, such as we find in the mythologies of all tribes and had no relation to the Doeg, named in the records of the Bacon rebellion in 1676, who were probably a branch of the Nanticoke.

What became of the Manahoacs? Did their pursuit of the game they hunted gradually draw them westward or were they, more probably, driven from the Piedmont country by their terrible foes the northern Iroquois, aided perhaps by the Susquehannocks who next appear upon the scene? But before taking up the story of the Iroquois and Susquehannock influence in Loudoun, we must turn to the English Kings and their grants of Virginia and particularly its Northern Neck, that spacious territory lying between the Rappahannock and Potomac, extending from the Chesapeake to a disputed western boundary.

CHAPTER II

ENGLAND ACQUIRES VIRGINIA

Mighty in her military strength and with an all but inexhaustible wealth pouring into her coffers from her American conquests, Spain stood as a very colossus over the Europe of the sixteenth century; and England, watching and fearing her hostile growth, grimly determined that she too, should have her share of that fabulous new world and its treasure. So deeply planted and so greatly grew this determination that it eventually became a part of England's public policy and in June, 1578, the great Elizabeth, with her eyes on the American coast, issued letters patent to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and after Gilbert's death reissued them on the 25th March, 1584, to his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh, to discover, have, hold and occupy forever, such "remote heathern and barbarous lands, countries and territories not actually possessed by any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people." As by its terms the new grant was to continue but for "the space of six yeares and no more," it was clear that advantage of its provisions should be taken with promptness; and Raleigh was not a man given to delay or indecision. He had been making his preparations; hardly more than a month elapsed before an expedition of two ships captained by Philip Amidas and Arthur Barlow set sail from England, bound for America. On the 4th of the following July, having landed on an island off the coast of the present Carolinas, these men raised the English flag and formally declared the sovereignty of England and its Queen. They brought home with them such glowing accounts of their discovery that Elizabeth was moved to bestow upon all the coast the name of Virginia—the land of the Virgin Queen. Two more attempts were made to establish permanent settlements in the neighborhood and although both failed, enough had been done to found a claim of English ownership and dominion, a claim which covered the entire coast from the French settlements in the north to the Spanish settlements upon the Florida peninsula, and thus the original Virginia became coextensive with England's pretensions on the North American continent.[11] It is true that Spain then claimed the entire coast under a Papal Bull but Papal Bulls meant very little to Elizabeth or to her pugnacious sea-rovers. One of the many curiosities of history is that neither Raleigh nor his captains ever saw the soil of that part of America which was to become the Virginia we know, nor did the Queen who named it ever have knowledge of its physical characteristics, its resources or its inhabitants. In short, Virginia proper was neither to be discovered nor have its first precarious settlement until after Elizabeth's death.

After these first abortive attempts to found English settlements under his patent, Raleigh, on the 7th March, 1589, assigned it and all his rights thereunder to a company of merchants and adventurers who were resolved to proceed with the enterprise. These assigns, after the death of Elizabeth, became the leaders in seeking from King James I "leave to deduce a colony in Virginia." That monarch, says Bancroft, "promoted the noble work by readily issuing an ample patent" and on the 10th day of April, 1606, signed and affixed his seal to the first Charter of an English colony in America under which permanent settlement was to be effected. This charter declared the boundaries of Virginia to extend from the 34th to the 45th parallels of longitude and authorized the planting of two colonies. The first of these, to be founded by the London Company, largely made up of men of that city, was designated a "First Colony" to be established in the southerly portion of England's claim; the right to establish a "Second Colony" to be planted in the north, went to the Plymouth Company, whose membership, headed by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Governor of the garrison of Plymouth in Devonshire, came principally from the west of England. Under this Charter the King named the first "Council for all matters which shall happen in Virginia;" under it the London Company dispatched the expedition of three ships in command of Sir Christopher Newport and having Captain John Smith among its members; and under it and the Second Charter (of 1609) the infant colony was governed until, in the year 1624, the Charter was revoked and the Crown took over the affairs of the Colony.

[12]Until the troubled reign of the first Charles, the growth of Virginia's population had been very slow. It was not until the defeat of the Royalists in 1645 by the forces of the Parliament and the King's execution in January, 1649, that the first great increase in population occurred. In a pamphlet published in London in that latter year, by an unknown author, it is stated that her population was at that time 15,000 English and 300 negroes and these were scattered along the lower portions of the James and the York and the shores of the Chesapeake. Then the defeated Cavaliers began to arrive in such great numbers that by 1670 Sir William Berkeley estimated that 32,000 free whites, 6,000 indentured servants and 2,000 negroes were there. Many of the old population and the newer arrivals as well, were pressing northward to the land between the mouth of Rappahannock and that of the Potomac which in 1647 had been organized into a new county, under the name of Northumberland, to include all the lands lying between those latter rivers and running westerly to a still indefinite boundary. This was new territory recently, and still very sparsely, settled by the English and even as late as 1670 it was contemporaneously estimated that the Indians between the two rivers had nearly 200 warriors.

Although the Stuarts had been deposed in England and the younger Charles forced to fly to the Continent, he was still King in Virginia with loyal and devoted subjects. It was under such conditions that Charles, actuated not only by a desire to reward certain of his Cavalier adherents who were sharing his exile, but also to create a refuge for others of his followers from the ire and oppression of the triumphant Roundheads, granted by charter dated the 18th day of September, 1649, the whole domain between the Rappahannock and Potomac to seven of his faithful lieges who, during the Civil War, had fought valiantly in the Stuart cause. These men were described in the charter, still preserved in the British Museum, as Ralph Lord Hopton, Baron of Stratton; Henry Lord Jermyn, Baron of St. Edmund's Bury; John Lord Colepeper, Baron of Thoresway; Sir John Berkeley, Sir William Morton, Sir Dudley Wyatt and Thomas Colepeper Esq. And thus, says Fairfax Harrison, "the[13] proprietary of the Northern Neck of Virginia came into existence."

He notes that of the patentees Lord Jermyn, after the Restoration, became Earl of St. Albans and Sir John Berkeley, Baron Berkeley of Stratton. "The only conditions" quotes Head "attached to the conveyance of the domain, the equivalent of a principality, were that one-fifth of all the gold and one-tenth of all the silver, discovered within its limits should be reserved for the royal use and that a nominal rent of a few pounds sterling should be paid into the treasury at Jamestown each year."

But to receive a grant of this splendid Proprietary from a fugitive and powerless King was one thing and to reduce it to actual possession was another and very different one. Charles might and did consider himself King in both England and Virginia and the ruling Virginians might and did consider themselves his very loyal and obedient subjects; but unfortunately for the seven Cavalier patentees of the Northern Neck, the Parliament and Cromwell took a radically different view of the matter and, even more unfortunately, were in a position to enforce that view. No sooner had the representatives of the new Proprietors come to Virginia and were duly welcomed by the royalist Governor Sir William Berkeley, than a Parliamentary fleet of warships arrived from England, deposed the Governor, set up the rule of Parliament in 1652 and abruptly ended, for the time being, the patentees' hopes of gaining possession of their new grant.

There was little to be done by these Cavaliers while Parliament and Cromwell ruled. And then the wheel of history, after its fashion, completed another cycle. On the 3rd September, 1658, Cromwell died and soon the ruthless and efficient but never very cheerful control of England by the Puritans came to an end. In 1659 word came to Virginia of the resignation of Richard Cromwell and the Puritan Governor Mathews dying about the same time, the Virginia Assembly in March, 1660, proceeded to elect Sir William Berkeley to be their Governor again. On the 8th of the following May, Charles II was proclaimed King in England and in September a royal commission for Berkeley, already elected by the Assembly, arrived, the[14] Virginians themselves welcoming the restoration of Stuart rule with great enthusiasm.

The owners of the patent of the Northern Neck believed that their patience was at length to be rewarded. Again they sent a representative to Virginia, this time with instructions from King to Governor to give his aid to the Proprietors to obtain possession of their domain. But during all the years of their forced inactivity, the settlement of Virginia had gone on apace. What had been in 1649 a thinly settled frontier, shewed now a largely increased population and land grants to these new settlers had been freely issued by Virginia's government. Many of those newly seated in the Northern Neck were very influential men and in their opposition to the claims of the patentees received popular sympathy and encouragement. As a result, Berkeley found himself confronted by a Council which obstructed his every effort to carry out the King's instructions and the endeavours of the Proprietors to gain possession of their grant being completely blocked, they were obliged to appeal to the home government for relief. The outcome of negotiations between them and Francis Moryson, then representing Virginia in London, was that the patent of 1649 was surrendered by its holders for a new grant carrying on its face substantial limitations of the earlier patent. This new grant was dated the 8th day of May, 1669, almost twenty years after the first, and contained provisions recognizing the title to lands already seated or occupied under other authority; generally limiting the Proprietors' title to such other lands as should be "inhabited or planted" within the ensuing twenty-one years, together with a constructive recognition of the political jurisdiction of the Virginia government within the Proprietary.[2]

This appeared a reasonably satisfactory compromise of the controversy to both sides. But suddenly in February, 1673, Charles made a grant of all Virginia to the Earl of Arlington and Lord Colepeper to hold for thirty-one years at an annual rent of forty shillings to be paid at Michaelmas. Thus was Virginia rewarded for her faithful[15] loyalty to the Stuarts. When the news came to Jamestown the Colony flamed with resentment and anger; and now Berkeley and his Council were in hearty accord with the wrathful indignation of the Colonists. Even though the King had not intended to interfere with the title of individual planters in possession of their land, his action threw the whole situation, and particularly in the Northern Neck, into turmoil and confusion. Exasperation was directed against the holders of the Charter of 1669 as well as those of 1673 and again the original patentees appealed to the Privy Council for relief. Again the King sought to help them but by this time they had grown weary of the long controversy and indicated their willingness to sell out their rights to the Colony; before an agreement could be reached, Bacon's Rebellion flared up and the whole subject was again in abeyance.

We must now return to the Indians. The Dutch settlements along the Hudson had early developed a very lucrative and active trade with their native neighbours, particularly the Iroquois, who brought to them furs for which they were given European manufactures, especially spirits and firearms and when, in 1664, the English conquered and took possession of these Hudson settlements, they continued the Dutch trade and friendship with the Iroquois. To obtain furs, the hunters and warriors of the Five Nations ranged further and further afield and before long were in bitter conflict with the Susquehannocks who had their headquarters and principal stronghold fifty or sixty miles above the present Port Deposit in Maryland on the east bank of that river from which they derived their name. They were mighty men and warriors, these Susquehannocks. All the early English who mention them pay tribute to their splendid strength and stature. Smith who, it will be remembered, came in contact with them before his skirmish with the Manahoacs, said of them that "such great and well proportioned men are seldom seen, for they seem like giants to the English, yea to their neighbours." And in 1666 Alsop wrote that the Christian inhabitants of Maryland regarded them as "the most noble and[16] heroic nation of Indians that dwelt upon the confines of America.... Men, women and children both summer and winter went practically naked," and adds, among other details, that they painted their faces in red, green, white and black stripes; that the hair of their heads was black, long and coarse but that the hair growing on other parts of their bodies was removed by pulling it out hair by hair; and that some tattooed their bodies, breasts and arms with outlines. Our American soil, from the beginning, appears to have favoured the art of the barber and beauty-shop.

From the English in Maryland these Susquehannocks acquired guns and ammunition and thus were able to hold their own with their Iroquois foe for over twenty years of the harshest warfare. But the Iroquois were relentless and though repulsed again and again, returned year after year to the attack. The Susquehannocks finally weakened by an epidemic of smallpox, were overcome, the Iroquois captured their main stronghold and completely overthrew their power. Fugitive bands of Susquehannocks, nominally friendly to the English of Maryland and Virginia, then roamed the western frontiers of those colonies and along both banks of the Potomac, still harassed by pursuing bands of Senecas.

Under such conditions it was not long before they came in open conflict with the English settlers, some say through Indian thefts, others because the English attacked a party of them, mistaking them for pilfering Algonquin Doegs. The fighting, once begun, spread rapidly and the settlers on their exposed frontiers, denied practical assistance by the Virginia Governor Berkeley and his colleagues (whom rumor said were making such substantial profits from the Indian trade that they were loath to antagonize the Indians by sending organized forces against them) turned for leadership to Nathaniel Bacon, a young planter of gentle birth, not long come out from England. Bacon was a natural leader, their cause was popular and soon Virginia found herself in the midst of an Indian war and a rebellion against the Jamestown government as well. Bacon led his men to victory over both Indians and Governor but suddenly dying from a dysentery or from poison—to this day the cause of his[17] death is surrounded by uncertainty—the "rebellion collapsed with surprising suddenness," his former followers were overcome by the Governor with the aid of English troops and Berkeley proceeded to wreak a vindictive and merciless revenge.

Meanwhile knowledge of the turmoil had reached England and the King sent Commissioners to Virginia to investigate the causes of the trouble and Berkeley's wholesale executions and confiscations of estates. These men made a fair report of their findings to the King, which, added to the many complaints from the families of Berkeley's victims, caused Charles to exclaim: "As I live, that old fool has taken more lives in that naked country than I have done for the murder of my father." In the spring of 1677 the royal order for Berkeley's removal arrived and he sailed for England in an attempt to justify himself in an audience with Charles, his departure being "joyfully celebrated with bonfires and salutes of the cannon" by the Virginians. But in England he found that the King, resentful at his abuse of power, avoided meeting him and in July the old man fell ill and died, his end hastened, it is said, by his vexation and chagrin over the King's attitude.

Upon the death of Berkeley, the King appointed Lord Colepeper Governor of Virginia. As he was not ready nor, possibly, inclined to go immediately to his post, the King issued a special commission to Sir Herbert Jeffries, who had been one of his emissaries to investigate Berkeley, as Lieutenant Governor in immediate charge of affairs. Jeffries ruled until his death in 1678 when he was succeeded by Sir Henry Chicheley as Deputy Governor under an old Commission issued to him as early as 1674. Colepeper did not personally take charge on Virginia's soil until 1680, and then but for a brief period, soon returning to England and remaining there over two years. It was not until December, 1682, that we again find him in Virginia.

Colepeper, it will be remembered, was not only by inheritance a part owner of the patents of 1649 and 1669 to the Northern Neck but he was coproprietor with Arlington under the grant of 1673 of all Virginia and now in his own person Governor of the Colony as well. For good measure, his cousin, Alexander Colepeper, was also[18] an owner by inheritance of a share in the grants of 1649 and 1669. It was apparent that he was in a position at long last to turn his Virginia interests to account; but in doing so he sought to make the new dispensation as personally profitable to his rapacious self as possible. Therefore he opened negotiations with his old associates, by 1681 had succeeded in buying most of them out, and declared himself sole owner of all these grants, although his cousin still owned his one-sixth interest. But the King had become annoyed at his conduct and the stories of his rapacity and, seeking an opportunity to punish him, seized upon the pretext that he had been absent from his post without leave. On this charge he, in 1682, was deprived of his office as Governor. Two years later (1684) Colepeper sold out his rights under the so-called Arlington Charter of 1673 to the English Crown for a pension of £600 a year for twenty-one years. He tried also to sell to Virginia his rights to the Northern Neck under the Charter of 1669, but in that transaction he was unsuccessful. A curiously ironic fate seemed intent upon keeping the Northern Neck Proprietary, reward of Cavalier loyalty and devotion, as an inheritance for the still unborn sixth Lord Fairfax, scion and representative of the family of two of the most able of the Parliamentary leaders.

Although Bacon and his men, when they took the field in 1676, had thoroughly disciplined the Indians in Virginia, the Iroquois and the Susquehannocks still entered Piedmont and roamed its forests. The Iroquois are believed to have driven out the Manahoacs and their kinsmen prior to 1670 and certainly claimed their lands by conquest; not coveting them for settlement but for hunting and particularly for such furs as they could trap and collect in a land plentiful of beaver and otter. The Virginians built forts at the navigation heads of the great rivers for the protection of settlers; but the northern Indians passed beyond and between them and not only attacked the tributary Virginia Algonquin tribes, from time to time, but were frequently in conflict with the English as well. Lord Howard of Effingham, successor to Colepeper as Governor, met Governor Dongan of New York in July, 1684, and with him closed a treaty with the Iroquois whereby the latter were to call out of Virginia[19] and Maryland "all their young braves who had been sent thither for war; they were to observe profound peace with the friendly Indians; they were to make no incursions upon the whites in either state; and when they marched southward they were not to approach near to the heads of the great rivers on which plantations had been made."[3] But the treaty also contained a provision that the Iroquois, when in Virginia, should "Keep at the Foot of the Mountains" which seemed to acknowledge their right to be there and so continued the Indian menace to such settlers as pushed into Piedmont. Nevertheless the frontier forts of the Virginians were allowed to fall into disuse, the Colony depending on companies of armed and mounted rangers to patrol the back country and keep the Indians in order, and there seemed some prospect of peace though the outlying plantations, long keyed up to Indian alarms, remained alert and watchful. However for awhile there was less Indian trouble in the upper country and then a new alarm occurred, resulting in the first recorded exploration of the present Loudoun.

CHAPTER III

THE PASSING OF THE INDIANS

When Smith came to Virginia, there was an Indian tribe of the Algonquin stock called by him the Nacothtanks, a name later evolving into Anacostans, which occupied the land about the present city of Washington and some years later having moved its principal village southward to the banks of the Piscataway Creek, thereafter was known by the name of that stream. A daughter of their so called "Emperor" or Chief, having been converted to Christianity, married Giles Brent of Maryland and with him moved across the Potomac to land he acquired on the north shore of Aquia Creek, then still in a frontier wilderness. The Susquehannocks, at the time of their outbreak in 1675, had sought refuge within the fort of the Piscataways but had been refused asylum, the Piscataways remaining loyal to their Maryland neighbours and aiding them in the fighting. In consequence the Susquehannocks bore these lower river Indians bitter hatred. When the Iroquois completed their conquest of the Susquehannocks and reduced them to vassalage, they embraced their side of the quarrel. Toward all the tribes of the east the attitude of the Iroquois was simple, consistent and uncompromising. Rule or ruin, subjugation or extinction, was the harsh choice offered and there was no alternative for these others save in remotest flight. To protect the Piscataways, the Marylanders gave them a reservation amidst their settlements. Blocked and perhaps made jealous by this move, the Iroquois changed from force to guile, seeking every opportunity to turn them against their Maryland protectors and, it is thought, eventually in 1697, persuading them to move across the Potomac into the forests of the Virginia piedmont where they camped for a while near what is now The Plains in Fauquier County. It was not long before white hunters or friendly Indians brought the news to the settlements and the Virginians, still having sporadic troubles with the Iroquois and Susquehannocks in these backwoods, viewed the incursion of another tribe with great alarm. They immediately sought to induce the newcomers to return to Maryland but this they suavely, though none[21] the less stubbornly, refused to do. At length in 1699, feeling the loss of their normal and accustomed diet of fish, they, of their own accord, broke up their camp and traversing the forests of the present Loudoun, settled on what has since been known as Conoy Island in the Potomac at the Point of Rocks. There had recently occurred several murders of English settlers by Indians, probably roving Iroquois; and Stafford County—which some years before, had come into existence to cover this upper country and was to include all this northern piedmont wilderness until through increasing settlement, it was separately formed into Prince William County in 1731—was again in fine ferment over the whole Indian menace. By direction of Governor Nicholson, the county sent two of its officers, Burr Harrison of Chipawansic and Giles Vandercastel whose plantation was on the upper Accotink, to summon the "Emperor" of the Conoy Piscataways to Williamsburg. Mounted on horseback and, we may believe well armed, the two intrepid emissaries promptly set out upon their mission, travelling it is thought, an Indian trail about a mile or more south of the Potomac, which is in its course approximately followed by the present Alexandria Pike, and fording as well as they could the various creeks which run into that stream from the south. The Governor had ordered that they keep a record of their journey and a description of their route and the land traversed and complying with those instructions they wrote the first detailed description of any part of Loudoun. Their report exactly complied with the Governor's orders as to its scope and became a document of primary importance in Loudoun's history. It reads:

"In obedience to His Excellency's command and an order of this Corte bearing date the 12th day of this Instance, April," (1699) "We, the subscribers have beene with the Emperor of Piscataway, att his forte, and did then Comand him, in his Maj'tys name, to meet his Excellency in a General Assembly of this his Maj'ties most Ancient Colloney and Dominion of Virginia, the ffirst of May next or two or three days before, with sume of his great men. As soone as we had delivered his Excellency's Commands, the Emperor summons all his Indians thatt was then at the forte—being in all about[22] twenty men. After consultation of almost two oures, they told us they were very bussey and could not possibly come or goe downe, but if his Excellency would be pleased to come to him, sume of his great men should be glad to see him, and then his Ex-lly might speake whatt he hath to say to him if Excellency could nott come himself, then to send sume of his great men, ffor he desired nothing butt peace.

"They live on an Island in the middle of the Potomack River, its aboutt a mile long or something Better, and aboute a quarter of a mile wide in the Broaddis place. The forte stands att ye upper End of the Island butt nott quite ffinished, & theire the Island is nott above two hundred and ffifty yards over; the bankes are about 12 ffoot high, and very heard to asend. Just at ye lower end of the Island is a Lower Land, and Little or noe Bank; against the upper end of the Island two small Island, the one on Marriland side, the other on this side, which is of about fore acres of Land, & within two hundred yards of the fforte, the other smaller and sumthing nearer, both ffirme land, & from the maine to the fforte is aboute foure hundred yards att Leaste—not ffordable Excepte in a very dry time; the fforte is about ffifty or sixty yardes square and theire is Eighteene Cabbins in the fforte and nine Cabbins without the forte that we Could see. As for Provitions they have Corne, they have Enuf and to spare. We saw noe straing Indians, but the Emperor sayes that the Genekers Lives with them when they att home; also addes that he had maid peace with all ye Indians Except the ffrench Indians; and now the ffrench have a minde to Lye still themselves; they have hired theire Indians to doe mischief. The Distance from the inhabitance is about seventy miles, as we conceave by our Journeys. The 16th of this Instance April, we sett out from the Inhabitance, and ffound a good Track ffor five miles, all the rest of the days's Jorney very Grubby and hilly, Except sum small patches, but very well for horses, tho nott good for cartes, and butt one Runn of any danger in a ffrish, and then very bad; that night lay at the sugar land, which Judge to be forty miles. The 17th day we sett ye River by a small Compasse, and found it lay up N.[23] W. B. N., and afterwards sett it ffoure times, and always ffound it neere the same Corse. We generally kept about one mile ffrom the River, and a bout seven or Eight miles above the sugar land, we came to a broad Branch of a bout fifty or sixty yards wide, a still or small streeme, it tooke our horses up to the Belleys, very good going in and out; about six miles ffarther came to another greate branch of about sixty or seventy yeards wide, with a strong streeme, making ffall with large stones that caused our horses sume times to be up to theire Bellyes, and sume times nott above their Knees; So we conceave it a ffreish, then not ffordable, thence in a small Track to a smaller Runn, a bout six miles, Indeferent very, and soe held on till we came within six or seven miles of the forte or Island, and then very Grubby, and greate stones standing Above the ground Like heavy cocks—they hold for three or ffoure miles; and then shorte Ridgges with small Runns, untill we came to ye forte or Island. As for the number of Indeens, there was att the fforte about twenty men & aboute twenty women and abbout Thirty children & we mett sore. We understand theire is in the Inhabitance a bout sixteene. They informed us there was sume outt a hunting, butt we Judge by theire Cabbins theire cannot be above Eighty or ninety bowmen in all. This is all we Can Report, who subscribes ourselves

This "Sugar land" where our emissaries spent the first night of their journey, and the Sugarland Run passing through and named from it, are frequently referred to in the early records and the mouth of the Run became in 1798 the starting point of Loudoun's corrected southern boundary line with Fairfax. They derived their name from the groves of sugar maples found growing there which, with the use of their sap, were well known to the Indians from earliest times. In 1692 David Strahane "Lieut. of the Rangers of Pottomack" tells in his journal that while patrolling the upper woods, he and his men on the 22nd September "Ranged due North till we[24] came to a great Runn that made into the sugar land, & we marcht down it about 6 miles & ther we lay that night." The wording quite clearly shows that the sugar land was then well known to the whites.

Although, as their report shews, Vandercastel and Harrison reached their goal and duly delivered their message, the Piscataways did not then or later comply with the Governor's pressing invitation. That their attitude was not prompted by defiance but rather by worried caution based on their appreciation of the manifold difficulties of their then relations with the whites, is indicated by the report of two other English envoys who, later in the same year, were sent by the authorities to Conoy. These men, Giles Tillett and David Straughan, kept a journal from which we learn that in November, 1699, they in their turn reached the fort and found that "one Siniker" (i.e. Seneca or Iroquois) was among the Piscataways who had had trouble with "strange Indians" who they called Wittowees and that the "Suscahannes" had captured and brought two of these Wittowees to the fort. The "Emperor" received the Englishmen very kindly and told them that he was then willing to "come to live amongst the English againe but he was afeared the sstrange Indians would follow them and due mischief amongst the English, and he should be blamed for it, soe he must content himselfe to live there." He accused the French of stirring up these "strange Indians" and "presents his services to the Gove'n'r, and thanks him for his Kindness to send men to see him to know how he did."

Our friend the Emperor shews his knowledge of statecraft. Doubtless he continued to find plausible reasons for holding on to Conoy where he and his people complacently continued to remain until after the Spotswood-Iroquois Treaty of 1722 which had such a broad effect on Loudoun and which we shall presently consider. During this long occupation of the island, the Piscataways finished building and occupied their fort and village and to this day evidence of their tenure, in arrowheads and other objects, is still, from time to time, discovered.

The journey of Harrison and his companion Vandercastel is important[25] to Loudoun not only because it resulted in the first known description of any of the topography of what is now that county, but also because it marks the first definitely known white exploration of the locality above the Sugarland Run and while unknown English hunters may have theretofore penetrated some part of Loudoun's wilderness, these men were, it is believed, the first whites named and recorded who ever trod Loudoun's soil above the Sugarland. Vandercastel's connection with our story then ends; but Burr Harrison became the progenitor of one of the most prominent and respected families of the county which has now been identified with its best life for five generations. He had been baptized in St. Margaret's, Westminster, in 1637 and came with his father Cuthbert Harrison of Ancaster, Yorkshire, to Virginia some time prior to 1669 when Burr, with others, patented land on Asmale Creek near Occoquan. Afterward, but before 1679, he acquired land on the Chipawansic, presumably from Gerrard Broadhurst. Therefore, to distinguish him and his descendants from the other numerous and not necessarily related Virginia Harrisons, he and they were thenceforward usually known as the Harrisons of Chipawansic. It was not, however, until 1811 that Burr Harrison's descendants in the male line took up their permanent residence in Loudoun; in that year the widow of his great-great-grandson Mathew Harrison moved with her children to Morrisworth, an estate seven miles southeast of Leesburg, now the home of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Fendall, which had come to her from her family the Ellzeys of Dumfries, and there she continued to live until her death.

In the year 1712 another courageous adventurer sought out Conoy. The Swiss Baron Christopher de Graffenreid had been interested in forming a colony of Germans, refugees from the lower Palatinate, at New Bern in North Carolina and also having obtained authority to make a settlement on the Shenandoah in Virginia's remote frontier, he proceeded to explore the neighbourhood. He followed the Potomac up to Conoy Island and drew a map of the surroundings. This map notes the great number of wild fowl on the river, particularly at the mouth of Goose Creek. "There is in winter," he wrote, "such[26] a prodigious number of swans, geese and ducks on this river from Canavest to the Falls that the Indians make a trade of their feathers." Such a description is enough to reduce to envious inanition our Loudoun Nimrod of today whose occasional reward of a few wild ducks may at rare intervals reach the hardly hoped for bagging of a single wild goose, as a rule now far too alert and wary to alight in their spring and fall flights over the county. The wild swan has, alas, wholly disappeared.

De Graffenreid's reference to the vast number of wild fowl on the upper Potomac, in those early days, has abundant confirmation from others. So numerous were the wild geese that the Indians called the river above the falls "Cohongarooton" or Goose River and the English at first gave it the same name; applying the name Potomac to only so much of the stream as lay between the falls and the bay. It was not until well after 1730 that the whole river was generally called by the latter name.

The "Canavest" referred to by de Graffenreid was the village of the Piscataways on Conoy and in his journal he describes it as "a very pleasant and enchanting spot about forty miles above the falls of the Potomac, we found a troop of savages there ... we made an alliance, however with these Indians of Canavest, a very necessary thing in connection with the mines which we hoped to find in that vicinity, as well as on account of the establishment which we had resolved to make in these parts of our small Bernese colony which we were waiting for. After that we visited those beautiful spots of the country, those enchanted islands in the Potomac above the falls." De Graffenreid's "mines" and "establishments" were to be over the Blue Ridge in the nearby Shenandoah Valley; but he shrewdly recognized the advisability of making friends with a tribe so firmly and strategically planted as he found at the settlement on Conoy. As to his "enchanted islands," those contiguous to the Loudoun bank of the Potomac long have had Loudoun owners and seem to its people to be sentimentally part of her domain; as a matter of cold fact and colder law, they lie within the bounds of Maryland; for in 1776 the long dispute over the sovereignty of the[27] Potomac was settled by a clause in Virginia's Constitution of that year relinquishing jurisdiction.

Two years before de Graffenreid's expedition, there arrived in Virginia as Lieutenant Governor, Colonel (afterward Sir) Alexander Spotswood, the most alert, devoted and able ruler the Colony had had since Smith—a man "who still enjoys an almost unrivalled distinction among Virginia's Colonial Governors"[4] and, says Howison, whose "chief advantage consisted in his social and moral character, in which aspect it would not be easy to find one of whom might be truly asserted so much that is good and so little that is evil."[5] Spotswood came to love Virginia as though it were his native land and great was the moral debt the Colony, and especially the counties created from its old frontier, came to owe to his strong and conscientious administration. Under a vicious practice by that time obtaining in England, the titular governship of Virginia had been held, since 1697, by George Hamilton Douglas, Earl of Orkney, who though never setting foot in the Colony, drew £1,200 of the annual salary of £2,000 attached to the office until his death in 1737; and thus Spotswood, preëminent among Virginia's rulers, served but under a lieutenant-governor's commission. A great-grandson of John Spottiswoode, Archbishop of St. Andrew's and Lord High Chancellor of Scotland, who lies buried in Henry VII's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, Spotswood descended from an old and aristocratic Scottish family, whose progenitor, a cadet of the great house of Gordon, married an heiress of the ancient race of Spottiswoode which took its name from the Barony of Spottiswoode in the Parish of Gordon, County of Berwick. Born in 1676 in Tangier where his father Robert Spotswood then served as physician to the English Governor and garrison, Spotswood "a tall robust man with gnarled and wrinkled face and an air of dignity and power"[6] had, in 1704, fought valiantly under Marlborough and had been desperately wounded in the battle of Blenheim. He brought with him recognition of the right of Virginians to the writ of Habeas[28] Corpus, which though, since Magna Carta, the common heritage of every free-born Englishman, had not theretofore run in Virginia. Had this been his all, Virginia would have been his debtor; in the event it was but an augury of many benefactions to follow.

From the first, Spotswood shewed a keen and enlightened interest in the problems of the frontier. His efforts to expand the settlements westerly and to subdue the Indians did not always meet with co-operation from the Virginia legislature, controlled by representatives of the more protected and densely settled tidewater sections, whose people, the "Tuckahoes" as they were called, were frequently unresponsive to the plight of those in the upper country; and from time to time Spotswood's impatience with his legislators boiled up into strong and bluntly worded reproof. To one of his assemblies, recalcitrant in Indian affairs, he addressed his well remembered words of dismissal: "In fine I cannot but attribute these miscarriages to the people's mistaken choice of a set of representatives whom Heaven has not ... endowed with the ordinary qualifications requisite to legislators; and therefore I dissolve you." A few Spotswoods, scattered here and there in the seats of the mighty of our modern America, might not prove inefficacious.

In May, 1717, we find him reporting upon the Indian situation to Paul Methuen, the then English Secretary of State, that though the English had carefully kept the terms of Lord Howard's Treaty of 1685, the Iroquois "had committed divers hostilitys on our ffrontiers, in 1713 they rob-d our Indian Traders of a considerable cargo of Goods, the same year they murdered a Gent'n of Acco't near his out Plantations; they carried away some slaves belonging to our Inhabitants, and now threaten not only to destroy our Tributary Indians but the English also in their neighbourhood." He adds that such conduct requires "some Reparation" and asks the Secretary to instruct the Governor of New York to cause his Iroquois to "forebear hostilitys on the King's subjects of the neighbouring Colonies and likewise any nation of Indians under their protection."[7]

Neither by temperament nor training was Spotswood a man to acquiesce in such conditions. After consulting with and urging co-operation upon the Governors of Maryland and Pennsylvania, he set out in the winter of 1717-'18 for New York "to demand something more substantial than the bare promises of the Chief men of those Indians, w'ch they are always very liberal of, in expectation of presents from the English, while at the same time their young men are committing their usual depredations upon ye Frontiers of these Southern Governments." He was fortunate in arriving in New York "very opportunely to prevent the march of a Great Body of those Indians w'ch I had Advice on the Road was intended chiefly against the Tributaries of this Governm't, and the Governor of New York's Messengers overtook them upon their march and obtained their promise to Abstain from any hostilitys on the English Governments."

It being late in the season for a conference with the Sachems of the Long House and the New York Assembly being in the "height of its business and like to make a larger session than ordinary," Spotswood arranged, through the Governor of New York, preliminary negotiations with the Indians and returned to his Virginia.

The discussions thus begun dragged along during the ensuing five years. At length, in 1721, the Iroquois sent their representatives to Williamsburg with more definite proposals and in May, 1722, the General Assembly passed an act reciting in detail the terms on which the treaty would be made.[8] Later in the summer Spotswood, with certain of his Council, went to New York on a man-of-war and thence proceeding to Albany (where he was joined by the Governor of Pennsylvania) the new treaty was closed after the usual endless speech making and other ceremony. By its terms the Iroquois were prohibited from ever again crossing the Potomac or the Blue Ridge "without the license or passport of the Governor or commander-in-chief of the province of New York, for the time being"; and the Virginia tributary Indians were similarly prohibited[30] from crossing the same boundaries. Moreover, there were provisions that should any Indians—Iroquois or tributary—ignore the prohibition, they were, upon capture and conviction, to be punishable by death or transportation to the West Indies, there to be sold as slaves. There was added a clause rewarding him who captured an Indian found in Virginia without permission, with 1,000 pounds of tobacco when the latter should be condemned to death; or, if he should be condemned to transportation, the captor should "have the benefit of selling and disposing of the said Indian, and have and receive to his own use, the money arising from such sale."

There was nothing ambiguous in this treaty's terms; the Iroquois in signing it realized that their Piedmont hunting grounds were lost to them and that the sportive raids of their war parties below the Potomac were ended.

And now Spotswood's consulship had reached its end. His enemies in London and Williamsburg had been industriously intriguing and upon his return he found he had been superseded. He had acquired a vast estate of over 45,000 acres in the Piedmont forests and to settle and improve those lands he proceeded to devote his great and able energies. But he had far from retired from his public labours. As Postmaster General for the American Colonies he, by 1738, developed a regular mail service from New England to the James; and was about to sail as a major-general on Admiral Vernon's expeditions against Carthagena when he suddenly died. He was buried on his estate, Temple Farm, near Yorktown, where latterly he had made his home. It was in his mansion there, then owned by his eldest daughter Ann Catherine and her husband M. Bernard Moore, Senior, that many years later the negotiations for the surrender of Lord Cornwallis to General Washington closed the American Revolution.

CHAPTER IV

SETTLEMENT

Although Spotswood's treaty, as we now know, had finally ended the Indian menace in Piedmont, the Colonists had to be convinced of that fact by reassuring experience before any great movement to the upper lands would begin. There had been other treaties and, as they well knew to their cost, Indian promise and performance were not always consistent. The first ten years following the treaty, or from 1722 to 1732, are a twilight zone for Loudoun in which one has to depend on fragmentary traditions and comparatively few grants as to actual settlement; but after the latter year the records become increasingly numerous and tradition more definite and the student stands on progressively firmer ground. Slowly there grew a steady increase in trappers and hunters to the cismontane region and then, gradually and cautiously, the landless men, the poorer whites from the lower settlements, the redemptioners or indentured servants who had fulfilled their contracts of service, began to make their way by Indian trail or through the untravelled woodlands. Very soon, however, there were purchases of substantial tracts by a more prosperous class who began to seat themselves upon their new possessions. They were a rough and sturdy folk, those first poorer arrivals, illiterate for the most part, bred to primitive conditions of living, many accustomed from birth to self-reliance in meeting the problems of existence on a sparsely settled land and wholly ignorant of the relative comforts of life enjoyed by the prosperous planters in tidewater. They built their rude cabins of logs in such places as seemed best to them, paying scant attention to land titles and being in fact, for the most part, mere squatters on their holdings; and there they planted small patches of corn and beans which, with the abundant game in the woods and fish in the streams, provided their liberal and hearty fare. It has been traditional that these earliest pioneers found many open spaces burned over before their arrival; for so prevalent had been the Indian habit of firing the woods, that historians have suggested that had the coming of the Europeans to Virginia[32] been delayed for a few more centuries, its great forests would have vanished before their arrival. Taylor records that the early whites found the timber (probably second or younger growth) "far inferior in size and beauty to what it is at present. Indeed it has been asserted that in clearing ten acres of land there could hardly be obtained from it sufficient material to enclose it;" but as he was a Quaker, living in the midst of the Quaker settlement between the Catoctin range and the Short Hills in the northern part of the county, whose people were in habits and daily life somewhat isolated and up to Taylor's time at least, given to keeping largely to themselves, we may assume that his tradition applied more particularly to his locality. However, the present writer, some twenty years ago, while improving a farm then owned and occupied by him in the Catoctin hills, about four miles northeast of Leesburg, had occasion to clear woodland for roads and gardens, he found that none of the larger trees, many of them oaks, had rings indicating an age of over two hundred years. Taylor, and following him Head, places the responsibility of burning the forests upon the hunters (ranging over the ground before the first settlers) who are said to have fired the underbrush "the better to secure their quarries;" but it is unquestionable that the Indians had preceded them in the practice. It will be remembered that more than a hundred years before, Smith's Manahoacs could not inform him of conditions beyond the mountains "because the woods were not burnt;" obviously in contrast to conditions on the Piedmont side; and Beverly in his history, written in 1705, amply confirms the Indian usage.

Although tradition tells us, and the absence of recorded grants confirms, that these earliest settlers were mostly squatters, there had been acquisition of large tracts within present Loudoun from the Proprietor of the Northern Neck long before their arrival.

In an earlier chapter the title to the Northern Neck has been traced down to the year 1681 when it vested for the most part in the second Lord Colepeper and it is now time to continue its history. Upon Colepeper's death, in 1689, his only child Catherine, with her mother, inherited the Proprietary. This second Lady Culpeper, or[33] Colepeper as the name was then also spelled, was something of a character. By birth, it seems, she was Dutch and had inherited from her own family both a large fortune and an independent spirit, not infrequently found together; and it was this fortune

"which enabled Lord Colepeper to hold together his large properties, particularly the vast Northern Neck proprietary in the Colony of Virginia. It was also her fortune which rescued from bankruptcy the English property of her son-in-law, the fifth Lord Fairfax.... Lady Colepeper, it appears, never succeeded in mastering the English language. She both spoke and wrote it very imperfectly."[9]

Lady Culpeper died in 1710. The daughter Catherine had, some years before, married Thomas, fifth Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron in the peerage of Scotland and, on her mother's death, the grant rested in them; for in the meanwhile Alexander Colepeper also had died (1694) and left his one-sixth interest to Lady Margaret Colepeper, the second Lord's widow. The fifth Lord Fairfax, dying in 1710, left three sons (all of whom later died without issue) and it was the eldest of these, Thomas, who inherited the title and became the sixth Lord. This sixth Lord Fairfax had been born in England in 1691 and came later to Virginia, living out his long life as something of a misogynistic recluse (due, it is said, to an unfortunate love affair in early life with a mercenary adventuress) at his seat Greenway Court, then in the wilderness of Frederick County, where he died in 1781. Today his body rests in Christ Church, Winchester. He it was who became the friend and patron of the youthful George Washington and who fills so large a part in the history of the Northern Neck.

The family of Fairfax had long been seated in Yorkshire where the men were something more than typical English squires, often rising to positions of much national as well as local importance. It traced its descent from Richard Fairfax, Lord Chief Justice of England in the reign of Henry VI. Sir Thomas Fairfax accompanied the[34] Earl of Essex to France and was knighted for bravery in the camp before Rouen. On the 4th May, 1627, he was created a Baron of Scotland with the title of Lord Fairfax of Cameron, which not very glorious honour he purchased for the sum of £1,500.[10] His son, Sir Ferdinando, was a general in the Parliamentary Army during the English civil war, becoming the second Baron, and the latter's son Sir Thomas, later third Baron, was commander-in-chief of the Parliamentary Armies and a most capable soldier. Becoming dissatisfied with the extreme policies of the Parliamentary party, he resigned his position in 1650 and was succeeded by Oliver Cromwell. This third Baron died in 1671, without male issue, and the title then passed to his cousin Henry, grandson of the first Lord. Upon his death, in April, 1688, he was succeeded by his son Henry as the fifth Lord Fairfax who has already been mentioned as the husband of Catherine Culpeper.

The fifth Lord Fairfax, although his marriage brought the great Proprietary into the family, seems to have been dissolute and extravagant. When he died in London, on the 6th of January, 1710, his affairs were in great disorder and it is said that at that time "his servant who attended him robbed him of the little money he had left." His widow, however, was a woman of thrift and character and intent on guarding her Virginia patrimony for the benefit of her sons. In 1702 Robert Carter had been appointed local agent for the Proprietary; but after her husband's death Lady Fairfax became dissatisfied with his conduct of its affairs and the revenues she was receiving and appointed in his place Edmund Jenings and Thomas Lee (then only twenty-one years of age) as resident agents. As Jenings was unable to go to Virginia at the time, young Lee found himself for four years in sole charge; and a most conscientious and capable agent he became and continued until Jenings came to Virginia in 1717 and took matters into his own hands. This Jenings was a man of considerable prominence who later was to serve, for a short time, as acting governor awaiting the arrival of Spotswood. After the[35] death of Lady Fairfax, her testamentary trustees "turned again to Micajah Perry [11] for help and he pursuaded Robert Carter to agree once more to assume the agency"[12] (1722) which he continued to hold until his death ten years later. The Virginia office of the estate then remained closed until 1734 when Lord Fairfax appointed his cousin William Fairfax (whose son Bryan by his second wife Deborah Clarke of Salem, Massachusetts, was eventually to succeed to the title as the eighth Lord and in whose descendants the title still remains) to act as collector of rents. In 1736 Lord Fairfax himself assumed the management in Virginia for a short time; once more the office was closed until in 1739 we find William Fairfax again in charge, this time with more extensive powers until Lord Fairfax returned to Virginia in 1745 and took upon himself control for the rest of his life.

We are thus introduced to two more men who, in themselves and their families, had paramount rôles to play in and about the territory now Loudoun; and between whom there was to develop no little rivalry and conflict of personal ambitions and interests. Lee, himself between 1717 and 1719 a purchaser of several thousand acres of wilderness lying on either side of Goose Creek, had been born in 1690 at the family home Mt. Pleasant in Westmoreland County and eventually became "President [13] and Commander-in-Chief" of Virginia, as he is described in his will. He was a grandson of that Richard Lee of a family long in possession of the estate of Coton in Shropshire who, coming to Virginia sometime prior to 1642, first settled in that part of York which subsequently became Gloucester, later moved to Northumberland and became the progenitor of a family ever since of outstanding importance in the Northern Neck and Virginia. Carter, a later purchaser of land on a truly vast scale, whose father Colonel John Carter, believed to have been the son of William Carter of Carstown, Hertfordshire and of the Middle Temple, had come to Virginia prior to 1649 and first settled in[36] upper Norfolk, now Nansemond County, came to wield an even greater power than his long-time rival. Our Robert Carter, (1663-1732) the "King Carter" of towering memory, was the second surviving son, and his residence Corotoman was in Lancaster County. The descendants of both Lee and Carter continued for many years to hold great estates in Loudoun. One of Lee's grandsons, Thomas Ludwell Lee, built Coton (long since vanished) about 1800 and another grandson Ludwell Lee built about the same time and just across the highway, the beautiful Belmont, that home of irresistible charm; while in 1802 George Carter, great-grandson of the mighty Robert, built and occupied Oatlands. Both Lee and Carter and their families and the great mansions built in Loudoun by their descendants will receive later mention.[14]

Unfortunately for the development of parts of the southern and southeastern portion of the county, the purchase of these great tracts by Lee, Carter and others greatly delayed their settlement and this to the disadvantage of the owners as well as the neighborhood. Even Lord Fairfax is found setting off to himself large specific tracts.[15] It was their intention to create hereditary landed estates, modelled on those existing in England and to be farmed by a numerous class of yeoman tenantry. But as the very type of farmer-settler most desired as tenants by the great owners came in, they early and strongly evinced that determination, common to all in the Colonies, to hold their land in a freehold that could be passed on indefinitely to their children and thus insure to them the benefit of their parents' industry and thrift rather than to become tenants for a limited period of any great estate; and this no matter how advantageous or tempting the proffered terms of tenancy. Under then existing conditions, with the supply of new and cheaply purchasable land seemingly inexhaustible if one had but the determination and courage to push on to the newer frontier, they went beyond the great manors, as they came to be called, and seated themselves in the upper lands or[37] crossed the Blue Ridge to the Shenandoah Valley. Eventually and much later, when parts of the manors were sold, it was often in comparatively large parcels and these and the remaining portions were, as a rule, farmed with slave labor, a custom practically nonexistent in the northwest part of the county. Thus the relative thinness of settlement, persisting to this day, of much of the lower lands of Loudoun may be attributed not wholly to the fact that the stronger and more fertile lands lay above Goose Creek but in part to the social history of those early days as well.

The first specific grant of land in the later Loudoun appears long before the treaty of 1722. Under date of the 2nd February, 1709, Captain Daniel McCarty "of the Parish of Cople in the County of Westmoreland, Esq." obtained title to 2,993 acres "above the falls of the Potowmack River, beginning on said River side at the lower end of the Sugar Land Island opposite to the upper part of the rocks in said River,"[16] apparently for speculation or investment rather than for immediate occupation; the number and character of the Indians still to be encountered thereabout made settlement on isolated plantations or farms far too risky to be inviting to rich or poor. This Daniel McCarty was the founder of another eminent family of the Northern Neck which intermarried in early days with many of the best known of the early Potomac gentry. He subsequently married, as her second husband, Ann, sister to Thomas Lee already mentioned, and widow of Colonel William Fitzhugh of Eagle's Nest in King George County. The joining together of the prominent families of the lower peninsula began very early and by the closing years of the eighteenth century had gone so far that almost all were in very truth "Virginia cousins" of various degrees and through numerous alliances. Indeed this became so general that the social status of any family, tracing back to that period and locality, can generally be determined merely by the test of its affinities.

It is remarkable that the literature of romance has concerned itself so little with Daniel McCarty. His ancestry, his own life and that of[38] his descendants unite in offering the richest material but, save in the traditions of Virginia, he is today all but unknown. He was the son of Donal, the son of Donough, Earl of Clancarty. Donal was an officer in the Irish Army that fought against King William and was ruined with its defeat. The Earl and his descendants were exiled and Daniel came to Virginia as a youth and settled in Westmoreland County. The Earls of Clancarty were the heads of a family descended from Cormac who was King of Munster in 483; and Burke, the great authority on the British peerage, declares that "few pedigrees in the British Empire, if any, can be traced to a more remote or more exalted source" than theirs; while another authority asseverates that "long before the founders of the oldest royal families of Europe, before Rudolph acquired the empire of Germany, or a Bourbon ascended the throne of France, Cormac McCarty ruled over Munster and the title of King was at least continued in name in his posterity down to the reign of Elizabeth."[17] Daniel's eldest son and heir, Colonel Dennis, married Sarah Ball, first cousin to Mary Ball, mother of General Washington; and Augustine Washington, the general's father, named him as one of the executors of his will. It was another descendant of Captain Daniel who was surviving principal in the famous McCarty-Mason duel over a century later—an event that so profoundly stirred the country and cost the life of one of the most prominent and beloved citizens of the Loudoun of that day.[18]

Francis Aubrey became a large purchaser of Loudoun land soon after the Iroquois evacuation, first obtaining a grant at the mouth of Broad Run about 1725. Among the tracts he later acquired was a grant of about 962 acres purchased on the 19th December, 1728 from Lord Fairfax on or near which later he built a home and lived. Nothing of this early house has survived; but we know that it was near the "Big Spring" then as now a conspicuous landmark on the old Carolina Road and about two miles north of the present Leesburg.[39] Probably "the Chappel above Goose Creek" of the Truro Vestry books, the Chapel of Ease or convenient neighbourhood church, the building of which was supervised by him for the Parish, was immediately adjacent to his home and the location of that structure, the first church edifice of any kind to be erected within the bounds of present Loudoun, is known within a fair degree of accuracy and in 1926 with appropriate ceremonies, was marked with a stone monument.[19]

Hamilton Parish was coextensive with Prince William County when the latter was created in 1731. By a legislative act of May, 1732, that part of Prince William lying above "the river Ockoquan, and the Bull Run (a branch thereof) and a course thence to the Indian thoroughfare of the Blue Ridge of Mountains" (Ashby's Gap) was set off as Truro Parish and a Parish organization promptly followed. The new Parish was named for Truro in Cornwall, a great mining district, for mining was expected to be an important industry there. The first Vestry meeting was held on the 7th November, 1732; at a meeting held on the 16th April, 1733, an agreement was made with the Rev. Lawrence De Butts to preach at the Parish Church and "at the Chappell above Goose Creek" for 8,000 pounds of tobacco, clear of the warehouse charges and abatements. The chapel was then either contemplated or preliminary work on its construction may have been begun; it was not finished until 1736. But during that interval it is obvious, from the Vestry records, that occasional services were held there—perhaps at first in the open air or at the nearby house of Aubrey and thereafter in the unfinished chapel. At a Vestry meeting held on the 12th October, 1733, Joseph Johnson was chosen "Reader to the new Church and the Chappell above Goose Creek.... In the Parish Levy for this year provision is made for 2,500 pounds of tobacco to Captain Francis Aubrey toward building the Chapel above Goose Creek, and the next year the same amount and in 1735, 4,000 pounds for finishing[40] said chapel."[20] Thus the construction of the chapel cost the Parish 9,000 pounds of tobacco which about this time seems to have been valued at eleven shillings per 100 pounds,[21] making the money cost of the chapel about £49″ 10s in Virginia currency or much less in the more stable money of England. Undoubtedly it was built of logs from the trees in its immediate vicinity and we may assume that it was very small.

At a Vestry meeting held on the 18th November, 1735, a payment of 1,000 pounds of tobacco was ordered made to Samuel Hull, Clerk of the Chapel above Goose Creek. In a meeting nearly a year later, on the 11th October, 1736, the Vestry ordered "that the Reverend Mr. John Holmes Minister of this Parish preach six times in each year at the Chappell above Goose Creek; and it is also ordered, that the Sundays he preached at the said Chappell the sermon shall be taken from the new Church;" but Mr. Holmes' ministry seems to have been somewhat irregular for at the bottom of the page is found this note signed by the Rev. Charles Green "the first regular Rector of Truro Parish":

"The Levity of the members of the Vestry is worth notice. They applyed to Collo. Colvill & entered an order, 23d Sept. 1734 for him to procure them a Clergyman from England. By the order on the other page they gave Cha. Green a title to the Psh. when ordained, and he had scarcely left the country when they received Mr. John Holmes into the parish as appears by the above order. N.B. Mr. Holmes was an Itinerant Preacher without any orders, & recd. Contrary to Law."

This Dr. Green, for he was a physician before becoming a clergyman, was "received into, and entertained as Minister" of Truro Parish at a Vestry meeting held on the 13th day of August, 1737. At the same meeting it was "ordered that the Churchwardens place the people that are not already placed, in Pohick and the new Churches in pews, according to their several ranks and degrees."[41] Also "Ordered that the Reverend Mr. Charles Green preach four times in a year only, at the Chappell above Goose Creek. And that the Sundays he preaches at the Chappell, the sermon shall be taken from the new Church."

At a meeting on the 3rd October, 1737, the Vestry appropriated "To Francis Aubrey gent. for finding books for the Chappell 200 pounds tobacco." Also

"Whereas the Rev. Charles Green hath this day agreed with the Vestry to take the tobacco levied to purchase books for the Chappell above Goose Creek and ornaments for the Churches, at the rate of eleven shillings current money per hundred. He by the said agreement obliging himself to find and provide the said books and ornaments, being allowed fifty per cent. upon the first cost in accounting with the Church-Wardens. It is ordered that the collector pay to the said Green the sum of 8000 pounds of tobacco, it being the quantity this day levied for the purpose aforesaid."

At a Vestry meeting held on the 15th April, 1745, it was ordered that Messrs. John West, Ellsey and French view what necessary repairs were wanting at Goose Creek Chapel and agree with workmen therefor.

That seems to be the extent of the Truro Parish records concerning the "Chappell." It is believed to have been in use until about 1812 and thereafter utterly disappeared.[22] In 1742 Fairfax County was created, consisting of the Parish of Truro. In October, 1748, the Assembly passed an act dividing Truro Parish at Difficult Run and the upper part became Cameron Parish, in delicate compliment to the Lord Proprietor's Barony; but most unfortunately the Vestry book of Cameron, which would be invaluable source material for the Loudoun student seeking information for the period from 1748 until after the Revolution, seems to have wholly disappeared or been destroyed.[23] The Chapel had from its beginning until it became a part of Cameron Parish, that is from 1733 to 1748, these Clerks and Lay Readers:

[42] Joseph Johnson, new or Falls Church and Goose Creek 1733-1735
Samuel Hull, Goose Creek, 1736-1740
John Richardson, 1741-1745
John Alden, 1745-1746
John Moxley, 1747
Thomas Evans, 1748

Aubrey is believed to have been the son of John Aubrey or Awbrey of Westmoreland, was an ally and close friend of Thomas Lee and, from his appearance in what is now Loudoun until his death in 1741, was of such dominant importance that he has been called its then "first citizen." When the county of Prince William was set off from Stafford in 1731, he became a member of its first Court and, in 1732, "the inspector of the Pohick warehouse and a member of the Truro Vestry." Two years before his death he became the Sheriff of Prince William County and, at about the same time, established the ferry at the Point of Rocks.[24]

But before Francis Aubrey settled at Big Spring, Philip Noland in 1724 had purchased land at the mouth of Broad Run. He married Aubrey's daughter Elizabeth and later removed to lands on the Potomac above the mouth of the Monocacy which his wife had inherited from her father. As early as 1758 and probably before, Noland operated a ferry across the Potomac from his new plantation to the Maryland side; thus joining the Maryland and Virginia sections of the Carolina Road, from the earliest days of local history a main artery of travel between north and south.[25] It was in this immediate vicinity that he built the mansion he was destined never to finish and which still stands incomplete, a most interesting example of one of the earliest of the more pretentious homes of Loudoun.

CHAPTER V

THE MELTING POT

Thus far we have been noting the arrival of Virginians from Tidewater. Rich or poor, great landowners or squatters, gentlemen of position and influence or the mere riff-raff of the settlements, with all the varying gradation between those extremes, they had at least in common their English blood and traditions and being the product of Virginia life, either through birth or years of residence. It is now time to consider other and wholly dissimilar strains which, during this period of early settlement, were coming into the newly opened country and which were to have such a lasting influence on its population.

As early as 1725 there was, it is said, a group of Irish immigrants which had established itself on the Virginia bank of the Potomac, opposite the mouth of the Monocacy. This particular cluster had come from Maryland having, perhaps, been attracted to the large grant between the Monocacy and the Point of Rocks which, before 1700, had been acquired by the first Charles Carroll, founder of his family in Maryland who, when he acquired the land on the Monocacy, was acting as Agent for Maryland's Proprietor, Lord Baltimore. Later his grandson, another Charles Carroll, inherited the grant, added greatly thereto, bestowed upon it the name of Carrollton Manor and in signing the Declaration of Independence as Charles Carroll of Carrollton, gave it and himself immortality. The Carrolls were Irish and Roman Catholics; perhaps they had encouraged these newcomers to go out to their great holdings on the Monocacy where life could be begun anew and there was less danger of interference with their religion than in the strongly Protestant east. However, whether encouraged or not, our particular covey of Irish seem eventually to have crossed to the Virginia shore and there planted themselves with small formality and no title. All was wilderness on both sides of the Potomac. The matter of a legal title was probably the least of our adventurers' troubles.

In the first half-century following the founding of Jamestown, few Irish were to be encountered in Virginia. The Colony was overwhelmingly[44] English with, it is true, occasional Welsh, Irish and Scotch here and there; but these were accidental and the basic and dominating race of the settlers was so wholly Anglo-Saxon that the few others were submerged and lost in the English flood. But between 1653 and 1660, hundreds of unfortunate Irish, resisting Cromwell, were shipped as political prisoners and little better than white slaves to Virginia and the other Colonies. Again, after the defeat in 1690 of James II and his Irish supporters by William III at the Battle of the Boyne and the resultant Treaty of Limerick the next year, great numbers of the Irish were banished or condemned to transportation and of these many were sent to Maryland and Virginia where as servants or labourers on the land, their services were in demand. While the majority thus transported were ignorant peasants, feudal vassals of their lords, the "Kerns and gallowglasses" of Macaulay, numbers of the nobility and gentry were exiled as well, of which we have already recorded a prominent example in Daniel McCarty. Inasmuch as those transported were so treated as punishment for their uprising in favour of James and against the de facto English government of William, they were stigmatized as criminals, although, as shown, their offense was purely political. But Irish offenders against the penal laws other than political were also from time to time condemned to transportation and as the demand for labourers by wealthier planters in Virginia grew and until negro slaves later were generally available to them, there was also much kidnapping of wholly innocent Irish who, too, were taken to the Colonies and sold into servitude. Among this heterogeneous mass of unfortunates there were undoubtedly many who were disorderly, depraved and vicious and who, we know, subsequently gave great trouble to the Virginians; but to classify all the Irish forcibly transported as criminals or lawless would be as unjust as it would be untrue. It well may be borne in mind that to most of the English, they were a strange, impulsive and foreign people and equally or even more damning, Romanists in an intensely anti-Roman community. As such, we may well believe, they seldom enjoyed the benefit of a doubt of their inherent depravity.

[45]The town of Waterford was, according to tradition, founded by an Irishman, one Asa Moore, who is reputed to have built his, the first house there in 1732, naming the new settlement for the place of his nativity. Later it received many English, Scotch-Irish, Germans and, particularly, Quakers to whom it largely owed the prosperity and progress it was then to enjoy.

During the interminable wars of the seventeenth century—in ghastly refutation as they were of those blissful dreams of the solidarity of Europe and that international brotherhood of peace and culture so fondly entertained by the Erasmian school only a few generations before—few parts of that same Europe had suffered more hideously than the land known as the Palatinate along the Rhine. The so-called Thirty Years War, from 1618 to 1648, brought devastation particularly to its lower portion. In 1688 its whole territory was invaded again by the French of Louis XIV—an invasion which, for sheer savage brutality to the people there and the inconceivable atrocities perpetrated on them, is difficult to parallel in the annals of civilized nations but which, with its certain legacies of distrust and hatred, is somewhat conveniently forgotten by the professional French patriot of today. The land was reduced to little more than a desert and such of its inhabitants as survived, to the utmost want and privation. For nine years, until the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), the French scourging of the land ground it to dust. A few years of quiet followed, in which the poor Palatines sought to restore their ruined towns and farms but fate seemed resolved on their annihilation. In 1703 another war, that of the Spanish Succession, broke out and raged until 1713 and the Palatinate again and again was overrun by hostile armies. It was during these years and after, that those left with the breath of life in their bodies appeared to give up hope of ever again occupying their homeland in peace. A great emigration began, ten thousand fugitives first going to England where they were received kindly by Queen Anne and her people and given much aid; but, in an England where work was none too plentiful, the Germans soon became an economic and social problem. About 3,800 were sent to Ireland where, in Munster, their descendants are[46] still to be found; but many more were sent to America, some to New York but the greater number to Pennsylvania. In the latter Colony they were so well received that they sent back word encouraging others to follow them; and soon the harassed Germans began to arrive in such swarms that between 40,000 and 50,000 are believed to have come to Pennsylvania between 1702 and 1727, wholly changing its complexion. The Colony's Governor, George Thomas, writing to the Bishop of Exeter in 1747 stated his belief that the Germans then comprised three-fifths of the population of that Province. But of the early arrivals many of the most impoverished worked out toward the cheaper and still wild lands on the then frontier and thence south through the strong and fertile regions of western Maryland.

Meanwhile Virginia had been encouraging settlements of refugee Europeans on her frontiers in an effort to form buffer groups between the inimical French and Indians to the north and the seated parts of her domain. In 1730 a grant of 10,000 acres on the Shenandoah River was made to one Stover for settlement by Germans who began to pour south from Pennsylvania and Maryland and soon the Valley was taking on that perceptible Teutonic colour with which it is still dyed.

In 1731 there came to the present Loudoun the first colony of Germans from the Valley. Of all the early settling it is doubtful if any was more intelligently planned or more reasonably could anticipate success. Instead of a few individuals pioneering in haphazard fashion, there was a compact and homogeneous group of about sixty families, the men almost without exception artisans of various trades or peasants skilled in thrifty farming; and their lot had heretofore been so harsh and their fortune so adverse that the hardships inseparable from making a new home in the wilderness were, by comparison, a kindly dispensation of a hitherto hostile fate. On crossing the Blue Ridge they and those following them settled the land between the Catoctin Mountains and the Short Hills, north of the present Morrisonville, which from that time on has been known as the German Settlement and than which no part of Loudoun has[47] been more industriously and providently farmed. Little those early Teutons spent on luxury or even comfort; a sound and certain living was their objective and the land and its increase, rather than ornate dwellings, received their uttermost effort. Even as late as 1853, Yardley Taylor was moved to record that their "farms are generally small and well cultivated and the land rates high. This class of population seldom goes to much expense in building houses ... many old log houses that are barely tolerable are in use by persons abundantly able to build better ones." But if their houses were primitive, the occupants were generally prosperous and free from debt and in later years comfortable and commodious farmhouses have taken the place of the earlier cabins. These earliest Germans, having neither speech nor habits in common with their neighbours, developed a self-sustained and independent community wholly different and set off from those of others around them and to this day their locality measurably carries on its distinctive life.

Following so closely upon the advent of the Germans that there has arisen some dispute as to which actually entered first, we find the arrival of the Quakers. "In 1733 Amos Janney left his residence at the Falls of the Delaware in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and migrating to Virginia with his family, established himself at Waterford"[26] and many other Quakers soon joined him. Local tradition places, even earlier than Janney, David Potts (another Pennsylvania Quaker) as a pioneer in the northern part of the present county but no record confirms his presence before the 16th November, 1746, when he leased 866 acres on "Kittockton Run" from Catesby Cocke for five shillings in hand paid with right of purchase. Legend may or may not be correct; the earliest settlers, as we have seen, often seated themselves without title. Both Janney and Potts were founders of well known families in the county where their descendants still worthily bear their names. It is definitely known, however, that soon the Quakers became very numerous; and as ever since they have been such a conspicuous element in the diversified population[48] of the county, a brief narration of their story and migration is of interest.

The "Friends" or "Quakers" as they were subsequently called, are a religious sect founded by George Fox in England in 1647 when he was but twenty-three years old. They owe their name of Quakers to their tendency, in their early religious meetings, to have become so wrought up in individual enthusiasm as to be seized with an emotional trembling or quaking and the earlier Friends "definitely asserted that those who did not know quaking and trembling, were strangers to the experience of Moses, David and other Saints."[27] Their characteristic tenets included the doctrine of non-resistance and opposition to all formalism in religious services and as Fox began his activities at a time of intense religious fanaticism met by relentless persecution, it was not long before he and his followers were in open conflict with the constituted authorities. From proselyting in public and interrupting conventional religious services, the more extravagant of the zealots indulged in activities which can only be ascribed to religious mania and the authorities promptly met their challenge.[28] Merciless whippings, dragging at cart-tails, the pillory, branding with hot irons and even occasional execution were their fate; but in common with other religious persecution their growth in number seems to have been coincident with the most vigourous efforts made to suppress them. Fox, a man of humble birth, with no advantages of formal education, possessed tireless energy and great bodily vigour coupled with the assurance of a natural and magnetic evangelist; and although equally detested by Churchmen and Puritans and in conflict with every other religious body, his following rapidly grew throughout England. Journeys by his proselytes to continental America, the West Indies, Holland, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Italy left converts where they preached and this was particularly so in the American Colonies where Fox himself came in 1672.

The first of the Colonies to hear Quaker preaching was Massachusetts in 1656, but Virginia was a close second; for in the following[49] year Thomas Thurston and Josiah Cole of Bristol arrived in the Old Dominion and are said to have made a number of converts before they were promptly banished. The Quakers were as little welcome in either Massachusetts or Virginia as in England itself and both Colonies passed stringent laws for their repression. Virginia ordained that any shipmaster found guilty of smuggling in Quakers was to be fined £100 and upon the third return of a Quaker after banishment, he was to be treated as a felon. But even before the passage of the English Toleration Act of 1689 the persecution had died down. By the end of the century they had so increased in number that they were a major element in Rhode Island, controlled New Jersey and Delaware and had, under William Penn in 1681, founded and were supreme in Pennsylvania. Penn declared for liberty of conscience in the Colony he termed his "experiment," with absolute religious freedom "for Papists, Protestants, Jews and Turks"—if not an absolutely unique, at least a sorely needed attitude in the seventeenth century religious life. Thence forward Pennsylvania was to be a great centre of Quakerism and from it mainly but also from Maryland, New York and other Colonies, as well as directly from Great Britain, were recruited the Quakers of Loudoun. Undoubtedly the familiar combination of economic pressure, the cheaper and more fertile lands of the new settlement and the pioneering spirit inherent in the British race explains the migration. It is interesting to note that by 1694 a Quaker had become Governor of South Carolina and that from 1725 to 1775 there was a constant flow of Friends from Pennsylvania, New York, New England and Great Britain to that State. As a main north-and-south highway, the famous Carolina Road, passed through the Loudoun to be, doubtless many came that way and we may believe that not a few of those emigrants joined their coreligionists who they found living in such comfort and prosperity in their fertile Virginia colony.

The Quakers of Loudoun had with characteristic shrewdness picked out for their settlement that part of the far-famed Loudoun Valley, between the Catoctin Hills and the Blue Ridge, that lies in the central part of the present county—perhaps the best and most[50] fertile land the county boasts; and there the so-called "Quaker Settlement" continues to the present time. In common with their German neighbours to the north, they tended to form a more-or-less compact colony, segregated from the other pioneers. They were frugal, industrious, far better farmers than their Virginia neighbours; but between Germans and Quakers no love was lost and, though each was isolated from the Tidewater element, there was little or no intermingling. Nevertheless we find them occasionally making common cause against the slaveholding portion of the community and, in the next century in the War Between the States, both German and Quaker adhered to the Federal cause and were, at least for the time being, more than ever cut off from their then intensely Confederate neighbours. Time has softened and gradually worn down these old-time edges of difference and today, perhaps more than ever before, we find the descendants of these earlier opponents living in concord and mutual respect.

Our melting-pot is slowly filling. In the Scotch-Irish it now takes another human ingredient as distinct from the Anglo-Saxon as were the Germans or Irish but destined to make a major contribution not only to the new population of the Piedmont but to that of Virginia generally and the other Colonies as well. They were splendid pioneering material with the persistent industry and frugality of the German and Quaker but, unlike them, mixing freely with the other settlers, planting themselves anywhere and everywhere they found conditions and lands to their liking and so soon and freely intermarrying with their Virginia neighbours that their blood today is found very generally mixed with the older Virginia strain. Concerning their origin and history there has been much misinformation and occasionally rather prejudiced and heated argument; but the main facts are not obscure.

In the sixth century one of the Irish tribes known as the Scotti or Scots, inhabiting the island then known as Scotia, but which we now call Ireland, crossed the Irish Sea and made a mass descent on the west coast of ancient Caledonia; and driving before them the Picts they found occupying the land, they settled down in possession[51] of their newly conquered territory, covering roughly the present Argyle. Five centuries later the descendants of these invaders, having waxed mightily in power and numbers and become one of the four tribal kingdoms of Caledonia, united with the others, the Picts, British and Angles, to make the Kingdom of Scotland to which they gave their name and of which their history thenceforth was a part. Thus apparently their future destiny was fixed for all time in Scotland; but Providence had not forgotten them and had other plans.

In all Ireland, never renowned for its meekness nor pacification, there was in Elizabethan days and before, probably no part more constantly and consistently embroiled than the Province of Ulster. More or less continuous fighting between its people and Elizabeth's soldiers gradually wore down the Irish and their final complete collapse came in 1607 when their native princes, the Earls of Tyrconnel and Tyrone, deserted them and fled to the Continent. Thereupon the first James of England, having succeeded Elizabeth, declared all the lands of the Province forfeited and escheated to the English Crown, thus providing a convenient and legal basis for dispossessing the native Irish of their holdings, which the King thereupon undertook to repopulate with English and Scotch. But the English did not view the King's inducements with enthusiasm. Inasmuch as, in comparison with the Scotch, they "were a great deal more tenderly bred at home in England, and entertained in better quarters than they could find in Ireland, they were unwilling to flock thither except to good land such as they had before at home, or to good cities where they might trade, both of which in those days were scarce enough" in Ulster.[29] But the Scotch, many of them from Argyle found Ulster, their old homeland, to their liking and James, Scotch himself, seems to have preferred them for his purpose. They came in great numbers, took root immediately and soon were creating a peace and prosperity in the Province unknown there for many a long day, their ranks being later heavily augmented by Covenanters fleeing from the persecution of Charles I. But between these Presbyterian[52] newcomers and the native Irish Roman Catholics, their neighbours, there was friction and hostility from the beginning which has lasted unabated to the present day.

Had the English government the wit and policy to have let this new settlement alone all would have been well; but the England of those days had yet to learn, from the costly experience of the American Revolution, that art of governing colonies in which she is today without peer. After the final crushing of the Irish at the Battle of the Boyne, in which the new Ulster population was of no small assistance, the English merchants grew jealous of the trade, manufactures and aggressive competition of the Province and in 1698 succeeded in obtaining from Parliament restrictive laws which all but ruined her industries, particularly in linen and woolen then, as now, outstanding. And now to the ruin of their trades was to be added religious coercion. Although, as we have seen, a Toleration Act had been passed for England in 1689, it was not until nearly one hundred years later that in 1782 the Toleration Act for Ireland became law. From 1704 on there was a great effort to force the Presbyterians of Ulster, as well as those of Scotland, to conform to the English Church and those who refused were forbidden to keep schools, marriages performed by their ministers were declared invalid and other civil disabilities were imposed. By 1719 the people of Ulster had been made desperate by this senseless interference and persecution and they, too, began to flock to America. As with the others, the movement, once started, grew rapidly and in this instance reached such proportions that it became by far the greatest immigration that, until the later day of steam, was to come to America's shores. Again Philadelphia appears to have been the chief port to receive them, as many as six shiploads landing there in one week alone. Before the emigration was eased by the Toleration Act and a generally saner attitude in England, it is estimated that half a million of the Scotch-Irish had crossed the Atlantic, carrying with them a deep resentment toward England, for which she later was to pay a heavy price in the stubborn and valiant support these people and their descendants gave to the American side in the war of the Revolution.

[53]As most of these Scotch-Irish immigrants were very poor, many paid for their passage by selling their services and labour for a term of years, becoming a part of that flood of "indentured servants" which we shall soon consider. Fairfax Harrison in his Landmarks of Old Prince William vividly describes their advent and early distribution in the Northern Neck. As soon as the earlier arrivals had worked out their contracted years of servitude, Colonel Robert Carter, about 1723, began seating them around Brent Town and Elk Marsh. But as their numbers grew, they soon shewed a disinclination to become tenants, preferring to push further into the wilderness "where they could and did take up small holdings on the same terms that Colonel Carter took up his great ones and in that process they scattered."[30] Being too poor to purchase negro slaves and the supply of "redemptioners" or indentured servants by that time beginning to diminish, they bought the cheaper convicts for labourers and the Piedmont backwoods of the Proprietary acquired a reputation for turbulence and lawlessness to which both master and servant contributed his share. But they settled the land, planted tobacco and corn as persistently and relentlessly as did their more prosperous neighbours and in common with them laboured to develop the future Loudoun.

To understand the status of the "indentured servants," who were so numerous in the Virginia Colony and were such a large and important factor in the population of the Northern Neck, it is well to first consider the meaning of the term. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the word servant was not at all confined to one who was engaged in a menial task but broadly referred to anyone who, for compensation, rendered service to another and it was customary in all occupations, calling for especial training or instruction, to take on apprentices "bound to serve for a certain time in consideration of instruction in an art or trade"—the apprentice to be fed, lodged and clothed by the master during the term and to give his labour and services in compensation for his support and[54] instruction. This custom obtained not only in the various crafts and trades but even in the professions as well, lawyers and doctors taking students on similar terms. In modern England the broader and older meaning of the word persists in the expression "civil servant" in reference to a government clerk or employé in what in America, too, is known as the Civil Service.

Virginia's agriculture was based on the cultivation of tobacco and corn—both hand-hoed crops, with practically no use whatever of the plow. As land was plentiful and the plantations increased in size, the great and pressing need was always for labor—and more labor. This system of indentured service in Virginia began very early and opened a great supply of labor not otherwise available. There were many in England of the poorer class and even of those once more affluent who had for one reason or another become the victims of misfortune and sought a fresh start in the colonies but were without the money to pay their passage. No small number of those who had become bankrupt became indentured servants. The severe English laws against debtors forced many to fly from that country and Virginia was a safe escape; for in 1642 a law had been passed in Virginia protecting these fugitives from their English creditors.[31] Little social stigma seems to have attached to the indentured servants as such. Frequently they lived with the family of their master, especially so when he was one of the smaller proprietors, and as they became proficient and earned their master's confidence they were often made overseers of their fellow workers. Although by far the greater demand was always for workers on the land, not all of them were so employed; some were artisans, some of the better educated became teachers and it was not unusual for the wealthier planters to seek and purchase these latter for that purpose. George Washington is said to have thus received his earlier schooling. As a whole, they appear to have been well and humanely treated in Virginia, or at least after the earlier days of their introduction, with little or none of the shocking brutality they are known to have met[55] with upon occasion in Maryland, such as called for that Colony's legislation of 1664, 1681, etc.[32]

That there had been some earlier harshness, but more probably to convicts, is suggested by the effort made by Robert Beverley, in his History of Virginia, first published in 1705, to refute rumours of ill-treatment or undue hardship in the lives of these people which had been spread abroad in the England of his day. No doubt the writings of Defoe and other authors without personal knowledge of what they undertook to describe, had had their affect. "A white woman is rarely or never put to work on the ground, if she be good for anything else," Beverley declares and further on has this to say:

"Because I have heard how strangely cruel and severe the service of this country is represented in some parts of England, I can't forebear affirming, that the work of the servants and slaves is no other that what every common freeman does; neither is any servant required to do more in a day than his overseer; and I can assure you, with great truth, that generally their slaves are not worked so hard, nor so many hours in a day, as the husbandman and day labourer in England. An overseer is a man, that having served his time, has acquired the skill and character of an experienced planter, and is therefore entrusted with direction of the servants and slaves ... all masters are under the correction and censure of the County Courts to provide for their servants food and wholesome diet, clothing and lodging."

"If a master should be so cruel, as to use his servant ill, that is fallen sick or lame in his service, and thereby rendered unfit for labor, he must be removed by the churchwardens out of the way of such cruelty, and boarded in some good planters home till the time of his freedom, the charge of which must be laid before the next county court, which has power to levy the same, from time to time, upon the goods and chattels of the master, after which, the charge of such boarding is to come upon the parish in general.... No master[56] of a servant can make a new bargain for service or other matter with his servant, without the privity and consent of the County Court, to prevent the masters over-reaching, or scaring such servant into an unreasonable compliance."

Moreover, when the servant had redeemed himself by working out his time, he received from his former master, as assistance to start out for himself "ten bushels of corn (which is sufficient for almost a year) two new suits of clothes, both linen and woolen, and a gun, twenty dollars value"; all of which were given to him as his due. He had the right to take up fifty acres of unpatented land and thereupon took his place, according to his merit and industry, in the free life of the Colony.

The system was necessary from the first; for if the servants had not been bound they promptly would have secured tracts of land to work for themselves, leaving those who had paid for their passage in the lurch. That it was advantageous to both master and servant is indicated by its growth. Its end in Virginia was caused by a cheaper labor supply having become available rather than from any lack of those seeking transportation. It has been estimated that, between the years 1635 and 1680, from 1,000 to 1,600 came annually to Virginia under its conditions and that from first to last not less than eighty thousand persons so arrived. But with the importation of negroes, beginning on a larger scale about 1680, the custom declined until by the middle of the eighteenth century, it seems to have practically ended in Virginia.

The transporting of convicts by England to her American Colonies—a far greater injustice to them than the later taxation by which they were lost to her—began early and was, in Virginia, at once and most vigourously opposed; but the everpressing demand for laborers seems to have rapidly modified the opposition, at least on the part of the larger proprietors whose power and influence was out of all proportion to their number; and it was not long before convicts were not only accepted without protest but even sought. It is the old story, in America as elsewhere, of a selfish economic advantage blinding those in power to the welfare of the State as a whole, although[57] many continued to hold misgivings of the outcome. Thus we find Beverley in a later edition of his history, recording: "as for malefactors condemned to transportation, the greedy planters will always buy them, yet it is to be feared that they will be very injurious to the Country, which has already suffered many murders and robberies, the effect of that new law of England."[33]

But a loose assumption that all the convicts or prisoners arriving were moral derelicts, or those whose offense essentially involved moral depravity, and that the proportion these bore to others leaving Europe for Virginia fixes the ratio of their descendants or influence in the Old Dominion's later population, would be wholly and demonstrably untrue. We must be much more discerning and analytical than that and, as in another instance, look to our definitions.

The penal law of England, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was far more severe than today. Literally scores of offenses were punishable by death or transportation which today are either not crimes or, if still so considered, are punishable only by fine or imprisonment. Among the transgressions most severely dealt with, were purely political offenses; and a political offense was essentially to have picked the wrong side in the many religious, dynastic or civic disturbances of the period. After the various Irish upheavals of the seventeenth century—and that island, it may be said, was conquered by the English no less than three times within less than a hundred years—there was banishment or transportation of many of the losing side. The transportation was especially ruthless after Cromwell's operations and again, a generation or more later, after the Battle of the Boyne. But the Irish were not the only political victims. When the forces of Parliament defeated the Stuart followers, they condemned to transportation a goodly number of their opponents; treatment which was promptly reciprocated by the triumphant Royalists after the Restoration who meted out the same punishment to former Cromwellian soldiers and non-conformists[58] as well. Again, after the abortive effort made in 1685 by the Duke of Monmouth to seize his uncle's crown, the vicious and bloody Jeffries and his colleagues, in their less frenzied moments, sentenced, as criminals, multitudes of the unfortunate followers of Monmouth to transportation to Virginia—there to be sold into as virtual slavery as any thug convicted of murder or highway robbery who had, in one way or another, been lucky enough to escape hanging. On arrival they sold for from £10 to £15 each; and we find the King adding his gentle touch to the work. "Take all care" wrote James to the Council of Virginia "that they shall serve for ten years at least; and that they be not permitted to return themselves by money or otherwise until that term be fully expired. Prepare a bill for the Assembly of our Colony, with such clauses as shall be requisite for that purpose." Thus the king; but in four years he has lost his throne and William III is issuing a full pardon for all political offenders.

Hence no small part of the convicts were unfortunates, rather than criminals, to our modern way of thought. But there remained a large and unpalatable number who had been convicted of crimes of all degrees and in their ranks were found a motley crew ranging from the lowest type of profligate, whose escape from the noose had been a public misfortune, to the minor offenders punished for a first violation of law. However even this evil residue was fated to leave but a minor contamination of the Colony's bloodstream. A great death-toll was taken by sickness on the transporting ships, particularly by the dreaded "goal distemper" as it was called. Those who survived the voyage naturally received far less consideration from their purchasers than was accorded the indentured servant; the unaccustomed climate took its quota and all in all the mortality was very great. Of those who outlived their period of servitude, some rose to positions of trust; many of the incorrigibles soon made the Colony too hostile for their comfort and took themselves off either voluntarily or as fugitives—sometimes to the more remote and unseated parts of Piedmont or, more generally, to the North Carolina backwoods, a favorite refuge for the dregs of Virginia's Colonial[59] population. And at length, in 1740, came an opportunity for a great and general house-cleaning. In raising the Virginia levies for the ill-fated expedition against Carthagena, many a convict was pressed into service and, in the disasters attending that adventure, ended his turbulent career. But unfortunately the polluted stream continued to pour in on Virginia's shores until after the Revolution.

An unduly large proportion of these undesirables appears to have found its way into the backwoods of the Northern Neck which, in 1730, Governor Gooch described as "a part of the Country remote from the Seat of Government where the common people are generally of a more turbulent and unruly disposition than anywhere else, and are not like to become better by being the Place of all this Dominion where most of transported Convicts are sold and settled."[34] One may, without an undue straining of the imagination, discover the descendants of some of these people in modern Loudoun's small lawless element.

The negro slaves were practically confined to the eastern and southern parts of Loudoun. They were all but unknown in the German Settlement and the Quakers as a sect were so opposed to the very institution of slavery that, as early as the eighteenth century, the Society in America reached the decision to disown any member thereof who held slaves.

In all this varied assortment of population, it is a tribute to the natural leadership of the Tidewater Virginian that he maintained his supremacy and control. From him the county inherits all that is best and most attractive in its social life—the courtesy of its people, the unfailing hospitality, the love of social intercourse, the ardour for outdoor sports, particularly the devotion to horses, dogs and fox-hunting, all of which so definitely distinguish it today and contribute to the outstanding and well-recognized charm of its life.

CHAPTER VI

ROADS AND BOUNDARIES

We have mentioned in the foregoing pages that an unusual feature in the settlement of these Stafford or Prince William backwoods, soon to be known as Loudoun, was not only the diversity of origin of the new population but that it came almost simultaneously from the north and the south and the west as well as from the Tidewater east. As the falls of the Potomac and Rappahannock blocked continuous water transport from the older settlements, the pioneers all were forced to come through the woodland trails and these trails or roads, if they could be then so called, now demand our attention.

What one might call the Appian Way of Piedmont, the longarum regina viarum as Statius calls the Roman road, was undoubtedly that aboriginal trail which, perhaps beginning as a buffalo path,[35] was followed habitually by the Indians in their north-south journeys to the earliest knowledge of the whites and appears in the records of the Colony at a very early date. The Carolina Road, as it is best known, became a great highway between the north and the south and if our surmise be correct that, in common with so many of our earliest colonial roads, it owes its origin to a beaten trail made by the heavier animals of the forest, it was probably used by the Manahoacks and their predecessor tribes long before the Susquehannocks frequented it in the latter half of the seventeenth century, not only on their trading journeys between the Dutch of Manhattan and the Carolina Indians, but in their war forays as well. The Iroquois of New York, as we have seen, followed their Susquehannock kindred to Piedmont and in Spotswood's day it was their ordinary and accustomed route. We think we get our first record of it among the Susquehannock "plain paths" noted in the Virginia Act of 1662 and it was sometimes referred to by that name. Later and from about 1686 until at least 1742, that part of the road between Brent Town and the Rappahannock was also known as the "Shenandoah Hunting Path," a name still occasionally heard; but the popular name was the Carolina[61] Road with its no less popular descriptive appellation of "The Rogue's Road" due to the cattle and horse thieves who infested it throughout the eighteenth century. That these gentry misused the road only, rather than were residents of the country it traversed, was always maintained, and apparently with truth, by the Piedmont people; but so numerous had they become by 1742 that the Assembly passed an act [36] calling on those driving stock along the public highways to have in their possession a bill of sale of their cattle and horses to be exhibited to any justice of the peace when due demand therefor was made. Yet the rogues still continued to travel their road until the ebb and wane of its traffic in the early nineteenth century. Although the records fail to shew that highwaymen plied their trade on this or other Virginia roads, Loudoun folklore has held to a belief in their activities as witness the legend concerning Captain Harper, Loudoun's own Robin Hood:

"This portion through the present Loudoun of the old Carolina Road was then locally known as 'Rogue's Road' on account of the many bold robberies committed along its route by the famous gentleman highwayman of the day, Captain Harper, who regularly patrolled it and terrorized all those who lived adjacent to it until such was the fear of this dashing and bold highwayman, that women were afraid to venture out upon this road alone. A rather pretty story is related in this connection—a young Virginia maiden was walking this road alone one evening about twilight, hurrying from a visit to a neighbour, when a dashing cavalier rode up and reined his horse beside her. 'Are you not afraid to walk this road alone on account of Captain Harper and his band?' he asked. 'No' replied the maiden 'for I have always heard Captain Harper was a gentleman.' The dashing horseman looked at her a moment and then walked his horse beside her until she reached the gate leading to her home. And then raising his hat and bowing he said: 'Captain Harper bids you good night' and digging the rowels into his steed he vanished as he came."[37] The writer omits to mention the local tradition that[62] Harper, though mercilessly robbing the rich, gave generously to the poor.

The Carolina Road entered Virginia at a point on the bank of the Potomac, above the mouth of Maryland's Monocacy, where Noland's Ferry sometime prior to 1756 became its connecting link with Maryland; thence it ran in a southeasterly direction somewhere along the present clay road to Christ Church just south of modern Lucketts; thence south, following closely the present Leesburg-Point of Rocks State Highway, through Leesburg over what is known as King Street (the King's Highway of yesteryear) and approximately along the present James Monroe Highway (Route 15 of the United States Highway System) to Verts' Corner, thence along what is still locally called the Carolina Road (or sometimes the Gleedsville Road) to Goose Creek at Oatlands. The present hard road from Verts' Corner to Oatlands, now the main road, was probably built and the old road's traffic at that point diverted about 1830 when the rough pavement of the road was undertaken. From Goose Creek at Oatlands the old road followed United States Route 15 as at present to the Little River Turnpike, now known as the Lee-Jackson National Highway, just east of the village of Aldie; crossing this, it followed what is now but a local and little used county road which, in its progress south of the county and under changing conditions, eventually crosses the other great rivers above their falls line and so on to North Carolina. Along its route the first church in Loudoun, Aubrey's little log "Chapel of Ease," was erected at the Big Spring; and later many of the mansions of the Loudoun gentlefolk, such as the Noland House, Rockland, Springwood, Selma, Raspberry Plain, Morven, Rokeby, Oatlands, Oak Hill, and others in due time came to be built and historic "Ordinaries" or taverns such as that known as West's and later as Lacey's and towns such as Leesburg and the nearby Aldie grew up. All through the eighteenth century the flow of its colorful traffic continued and developed in volume until the founding of the City of Washington, as the nation's Capital, drew to the east those travelling between the northern and southern States. And now, over a hundred[63] years after the passing of its golden days of activity, there are rumoured plans to revive the old road as a main north and south highway and once again, in the not too distant future, we may see its old life restored, with motors and trucks speeding along its surface where the old-time foot and horse-travel and Indians and soldiers, missionaries and traders, drovers honest or otherwise, were wont slowly to pass.

Nor are the old mansions and towns the only surviving landmarks along its way. The famous Big Spring still rises in as steady volume as of yore; the Tuscarora and Goose Creeks, no longer needfully forded but now spanned by modern concrete bridges, still flow complacently in their old-time channels and between them, on the west side of the present road and two and a half miles south of Leesburg, still stand the old Indian mounds.

These mounds, for there are others scattered to the west of the one so noticeable from the highway, have always excited local interest but the present generation has all but forgotten their traditional story. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the house of Mr. T. W. Gaines, on whose land rises the mound nearest the road, or perhaps over the land where the mounds themselves now stand, there was fought a hardly contested Indian battle at about the time the first of the white pioneers were coming into that neighbourhood. Many years ago the late Mrs. William H. Martin, then a bride recently come to Leesburg, with the assistance of the late Miss Lizzie Worsley, who gave a lifetime of study to the past of Leesburg and Loudoun, carefully gathered up what she then could of the old story which had been handed down from generation to generation and incorporated it in a gracefully written "History and Traditions of Greenway" which was published in the Record of Leesburg, then edited by her husband.

"Numberless were said to be dead warriors," wrote Mrs. Martin, "who found their last resting place so far from their native lands beneath the mounds that were easily distinguishable in the gloom of the thick forest. This battle had been between the Catawbas of the[64] Carolinas and the Delawares.[38] An hereditary enmity existed between these two tribes, distant as they were, the one from the other. A large band of Delawares, pushing into the territory of the Catawbas had severely punished that tribe, and victorious, were travelling northward to their home. The Catawbas followed and unexpectedly fell upon them, having overtaken them at the Potomac. Terrible and swift was their revenge, yet such were the fighting qualities of the Delawares thus brought to bay, that the Catawbas were forced to retreat, without prisoners. But when the remaining Delaware warriors looked upon their dead they saw the flower of their tribe, stark in death, and too far to be carried to their own hunting grounds. So there they were buried...."[39]

The surviving conquerors gathered together the bodies of their slain tribesmen and over them toiled to erect the mounds that still stand. The mounds and many hundred acres of surrounding land were early acquired by the Mead family, who later built nearby Greenway, and in that family the legend was handed down that in the springtime of each year, about the anniversary of the battle, there came through the forest a band of Indians who, when they reached the mounds, conducted weird mourning rites for their fallen brethren, made offerings of arrows and food and then disappeared in the surrounding woods as silently as they came. As the years passed, the mourners grew fewer and fewer until at length but a solitary old warrior arrived and held what proved to be the final ceremony. But the story does not end with those last solitary rites. According to the Mead family tradition, year after year, as the night fell on the anniversary of the battle, weird sounds of conflict came from the Indian mounds though no person or living thing could be seen.

Perhaps of equal antiquity and second only to the Carolina Road in early importance but in that respect now by far surpassing it, is the highway roughly paralleling the Potomac, the old Ridge Road now generally known as the Alexandria Pike. This road also originated[65] in an Indian trail, possibly following an earlier buffalo path; it joined the famous Potomac Path of Tidewater above the ford at Hunting Creek and it was along its course that we have seen Giles Vandercastel and Burr Harrison, in 1699, exploring their way on their mission to Conoy Island. This was the main entrance from the lower part of the Northern Neck to at least so much of Loudoun as lies between the Potomac and the Catoctin Hills; and along its course and that of the Colchester Road to the south came the majority of the Tidewater settlers. Its route through what later was to be the Town of Leesburg is marked by Loudoun Street. The late Charles O. Vandevanter of Leesburg, who made a careful study of the location of these old roads, believed that originally its course west of Leesburg followed what is now known as the Dry Mill Road to Clark's Gap; but there is reason to believe that he was mistaken. As the road approaches the rise of the Catoctin Hills, it certainly at one time followed the hollow to the west of the present established road and upon the land later owned by the author; so running west of the present Roxbury Hall and on to Clark's Gap, marks of its old route being still plainly discernible. When the highway was incorporated in 1831, its route at this point was changed to approximately its present location to avoid the sharpness of the grade as it left the little branch now crossed by stone culverts. Remains of the old road were discovered in 1923 when building the private road to the house last named. At the foot of the hill and in front of the present tenant house, rough piking was uncovered and nearby, where the path leaves the lane to go to the barn, some old brick were dug up. The late Samuel Norris, who died in 1933 at the age of eighty-four, said that at this point there once was a cottage where, as he had heard when a boy from older people, there had lived a man whose duty it was to care for the extra horses which were attached to the stage coaches before they began the abrupt rise of the road at that point in following the hollow northwesterly. From Clark's Gap the early road followed the present sandclay road to what is now known as Ely's Corner, past the present Paeonian Springs and Warner's Cross Roads and Wheatland and Hillsboro to the depression in the[66] Blue Ridge known as Vestal's or Key's Gap—Gershom Keys having owned land at that point as early as 1748 and the Vestal family having operated a ferry across the Shenandoah nearby at least as early as 1754 and perhaps in 1736; for we know it was in operation at that time and that one G. Vestal was living in the immediate neighbourhood then. Washington followed this road on his mission to Fort du Quesne in 1753 and once again in 1754 as major of that expedition against the French on the Alleghany (to the command of which he later succeeded on the illness and death of Colonel Fry), which resulted in the building and surrender by him of Fort Necessity.[40] In the following year it was trodden by that brigade of Braddock's army which, under the command of Sir Peter Halkett, left the main body of the troops when that main body crossed the Potomac over into Maryland at the present Georgetown as is related in a later chapter.

In an effort to attract the increasing traffic to and from the west, Leesburg citizens incorporated in 1831 the Leesburg and Snickers' Gap Turnpike Company which built an improved road north from Clark's Gap to Snickers' Gap, as the old Williams' Gap had then come to be called; and this new road (which is the present Alexandria-Winchester Highway) took the traffic theretofore going through Vestal's Gap and has since been the northerly main route across the Blue Ridge.

To carry the old Ridge Road over Broad Run, we know that there was built, before 1755, one of the earliest highway bridges in Loudoun's territory of which record has been preserved; for on the 1755 edition of the Fry & Jefferson map a wooden bridge is shewn at that point. The picturesque stone bridge that now spans the stream, venerable as it appears, may not have been constructed before 1820, at about which time that part of the road was being improved by the Leesburg Turnpike Company; nevertheless in eastern Loudoun it is a popular legend that it was built by George Washington as a young man and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood firmly believe that to be true.

[67]The third of the principal roads of colonial Loudoun is called by Fairfax Harrison the Colchester Road and is described by him as also, in its first beginning an Indian path, developed about 1728 by King Carter and his sons Robin and Charles from the Occoquan below the falls "past the future sites of Payne's Church and the present Fairfax Court House all the way to the Frying Pan run."[41] The Carters believed that there was copper on certain of their recently acquired lands and this road was developed to bring the ore to tidewater. It became known as the Ox Road and a year or so later joined Walter Griffin's Rolling Road running west across Little Rocky Run and eventually across Elk Lick and Bull Run, across the Carolina Road (near which crossing West's Ordinary was built), and so above the ford over Little River to the Blue Ridge Road to Williams' Gap. It was over this road that the youthful Washington returned in the spring of 1748 from his survey with George William Fairfax of the lands of Lord Fairfax in the valley and thus first set foot in the present Loudoun; crossing the Blue Ridge at Williams' Gap [42] they proceeded to William West's house, later to be licensed as West's Ordinary and still later as Lacey's. Incidentally this old building and landmark continued to stand until the year 1927 when it was quite needlessly and most unfortunately torn down.

The Colchester Road continued to be a main thoroughfare up to about 1806 when the construction of Little River Turnpike diverted most of its travel and the new road with its branches became the principal highway system in southern Loudoun.

The Virginia roads in the early days were in terrible condition for wheeled traffic. Their most earnest defenders can only allege that they were no worse than other American roads of those days and better than many, a defense that damns without even the proverbial faint praise. Englishmen of the period were still asleep in their attitude toward road building and many of the highways of England seem to have been as bad as those in America. One peculiarity of[68] the Virginia road was its general lack of side-fencing. Adjacent property owners were quite apt to run their boundary fences across the highway, leaving a gate for the traveller to open and pass through. Curious as this may seem to us, it was not wholly without its advantage; for where the highway had become a sink-hole of mud, it thus was possible for the passer-by to make as wide a detour through adjacent fields or woods as might be necessary to avoid the obstruction. This throws light upon the effort at Georgetown, predecessor settlement of the larger Leesburg, to have the course of the Carolina Road as it passed through that hamlet definitely established by the court as early as 1742 and again in 1757.[43]

Bridges were few, far between, and primitive. There was, as we have shewn, a wooden bridge prior to 1755 carrying the Ridge Road over Broad Run and it is believed that prior to 1739, the same road crossed Difficult near Colvin Run over a bridge of sorts; but for the most part fords were used to cross streams, or ferries in the case of the Potomac and other great rivers. When fords and ferries failed, the mounted traveller swam his horse across, leaving the wayfarer on foot to such more precarious adventure as conditions and his courage offered.

In a preceding chapter we have seen the Vestrymen of Truro Parish engaged in ecclesiastical affairs committed to their charge; among their secular duties was to appoint every four years reputable Freeholders to "perambulate" the Parish, that is to say to travel over the plantations and farms within it and renew their landmarks. In Virginia this was called "processioning" but it derived from a very ancient English practice know as "beating the bounds" believed to have been brought by Saint Augustine to England from Gaul where "it may have been derived from the Roman festival of Terminus, the god of landmarks, to whom cakes and ale were offered, sports and dancing taking place at the boundaries." In England we find the "beating of the bounds" observed under Alfred and Aethelstan, whose laws mention it. In later days, maps still[69] being rare, it continued an English parish custom, generally observed on Ascension Day or during Rogation Week. A procession was formed, headed by the Priest of the Parish, the Churchwardens and other Parish dignitaries and followed by a crowd of boys who were armed with sticks with which they beat the Parish boundary stones and were sometimes beaten themselves at each marker in order to fix those markers in their minds and to insure the location of the boundary stones being remembered through the life of the younger generation. The procession frequently ended in a "parish-ale" or feast which doubtlessly assisted in reconciling the boys to it all.[44] In earlier days the Priests sought the Divine blessing for the following harvest on the lands within the parish. But translated to Virginia the procedure was robbed of much of its formality and many of its picturesque features and came to apply to renewing the landmarks of private holdings rather than confirming in memory those of the Parish bounds. There was a Truro Vestry meeting held on the 8th October, 1743, to appoint "Processioners," which meeting, the record states, was pursuant to an order of Fairfax County Court, Loudoun then being included in Fairfax. The Vestrymen at their meeting "laid off the said Parish into Precincts and appointed Processioners in manner following." As the men appointed were representative men in their neighbourhoods and as the "Precinct" may be taken to forecast the later division of Loudoun into its Magisterial Districts of modern days, it is interesting to study so much of the record as refers to the country above Difficult Run which in a few years was to be organized as Loudoun:

"That John Trammell and John Harle procession between Difficult Run and Broad Run; that Anthony Hampton and William Moore procession between Broad Run and the south side of Goose Creek as far as the fork of Little River; that Philip Noland and John Lasswell procession between Goose Creek and Limestone Run as far as the fork of Little River; that Amos Janney and William Hawling procession between Limestone Run and the south branch of Kitoctan.

"Between the south fork of Kitoctan and Williams Gap, no free holder in this precinct; between Williams Gap, Ashley's Gap, the County line and Goose Creek, to the Beaver Dam, and back to the Gap, no freeholder in this precinct. Between the Beaver Dam and the north east fork of Goose Creek no freeholder in this precinct."

Level Jackson and Jacob Lasswell were ordered to procession between the northeast and northwest forks of Goose Creek; John Middleton and Edward Hews between Little River and Goose Creek; William West and William Hall Junior between Little River and Walnut "Cabbin" branch; George Adams and Daniel Diskin between Walnut Cabbin branch, Broad run and Cub run and Popes head. The editors of the record add that these Processioners owned land within their several precincts at that date.[45]

is interesting. A and C take in parts of the Quaker Settlement. Also it is traditional in the Osburn family of Loudoun that their forebears John and Nicholas Osburn, sons of Richard Osburn of New Jersey and later of Chester County, Pennsylvania, came from Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah Valley near Harper's Ferry and thence in 1734 crossed the Blue Ridge and settled on its eastern foothills near the present Bluemont. It may be that with other pioneers in the upper lands they occupied their farms at first without title and later were obliged to buy the lands they had rescued from the wilderness from the more shrewd and far-sighted land speculators for we find no grants from the Proprietor to them. Many of the earliest settlers were in that position. Catesby Cocke and[71] Benjamin Grayson particularly, took title to great tracts west of the Catoctin Hills and in 1740 sold their holdings to John Colvil of Cleesch as will later appear.[46] Neither Cocke nor Grayson were settlers in Loudoun. The former was the son of Dr. William Cocke, Secretary of State and he himself had been successively clerk of the counties of Stafford, Prince William and Fairfax. Grayson, a Scotch merchant from Quantico, became the father of Colonel William Grayson of Revolutionary fame who, with Richard Henry Lee, first represented Virginia in the United States Senate.

CHAPTER VII

SPECULATION AND DEVELOPMENT

In the Quarter century, between 1730 and the French and Indian War of 1755, the lands of the future Loudoun became progressively more populous. Although Truro Parish had been created as recently as 1732, this pressure of incoming settlers seemed to call for the division, in its turn, of Truro and in 1748 the government of the Colony set off the upper part of Truro, beyond Difficult Run, as a new parish which was named Cameron in delicate compliment to the Lord Proprietor's Scotch Barony. Most unfortunately, the first vestry book of the new parish, which would be invaluable source material for the Loudoun student seeking information for the period from 1748 until the Revolution, has vanished or been destroyed. The first parson of Cameron was the Rev. John Andrews, probably the hero of a convivial incident soon to be related.[47]

Increasing population meant rapidly rising land values, exercising an irresistible lure to many of the more active speculators of the Northern Neck. Such men of substance as Aubrey and Noland were developing the lands they purchased; but in another class were Benjamin Grayson, Catesby Cocke, George Eskridge, the wealthy Potomac trader John Colvil of Cleesh, that turbulent though gifted son of Dublin John Mercer and even William Fairfax himself, all of whom, so far as Loudoun was concerned, were active in land ventures rather than development. The Germans we have met coming over the Blue Ridge were more intent upon subduing the wilderness than skilled in the niceties of land titles; hence they, in common with many of the other pioneers, appear to have frequently omitted to secure grants from the proprietor for their holdings, giving Cocke, Grayson, Mercer and even Aubrey the opportunity, knowingly or otherwise, to secure the legal title to the lands of which they had taken possession.

In 1740 John Colvil bought out Cocke and his colleagues and, writes Fairfax Harrison "many lesser men and by pre-arrangement[73] divided the territory with William Fairfax. Keeping for himself the lands lying between Catoctin Creek and the Catoctin Ridge and stretching from the Potomac to Waterford, he conveyed to William Fairfax 46,466 acres, constituting all the territory on the Potomac lying between Catoctin Creek and the Shenandoah River, including the Blue Ridge from Gregory's Gap to Harper's Ferry. The purchaser divided the property at the Short Hills into two estates, naming the northern one 'Shannondale' and the southern one 'Piedmont' and administered them as manors, on leases for three lives. By his will he left these lands, with his mansion house, Belvoir, to his eldest son, and the latter in turn, by his will of 1780, entailed them, with the intention that they should constitute the 'plantation' of Belvoir House, always to be held with it. But soon after this last will was written, the success of the American Revolution made it necessary for George William Fairfax, by codicil, to change his testamentary dispositions and his proposed entail was never made effective."[48]

After Colvil had settled with William Fairfax, he still held 16,290 acres along Catoctin Creek, to say nothing of 1,500 acres on Difficult Run, his plantation on Great Hunting Creek known as Cleesh and other lands in the Northern Neck. Born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, he was closely related to the Earl of Tankerville, through the latter's mother being his first cousin—a matter in which he took some pride and which was to be of even more moment to the Earl; for when Colvil came to make his will in 1755, he left his plantation Cleesh, then containing about 1,000 acres, to his own brother, Thomas Colvil, for life with remainder over "to the Right Honourable the present Earl of Tankerville and his heirs forever" and also "in consideration of my relation and alliance to the said Earl of Tankerville son of my father's brother's daughter," he left to him outright his 16,000 acres of land on the Catoctin, his 1,500 acres on Difficult and his interest in a certain nearby copper mine.[49] Thenceforth these lands remained in the Earl's family until after the Revolution. Thus originated the Earl of Tankerville's title to[74] certain Loudoun lands, reference to which occasionally yet is heard.

About 1739 Josias Clapham, of an ancient family of Yorkshire (which long has been associated with the Fairfaxes there) bought land near the Point of Rocks and before his death owned much land in the Northern Neck. He died sometime prior to the 27th December, 1749, when his will, dated the 29th October, 1744, was proven in Fairfax County. In that will he left

"to my brother's son Josias Clapham two hundred fourty three Achres of four hundred joyning to Madm. Mason commonly called the Flat Spring to him and his heirs forever."

"I leave my hole real Estate and Parsonable Estate to my brothers son Josias Clapham and if he dont come in, it is my desire that his brother Joseph should have it."[50]

Nicholas Cresswell, the journalist, as we shall see in Chapter XI, states that the younger Josias lived in Wakefield in Yorkshire and was much in debt. He decided to "come in" by emigrating to Virginia and soon appeared on his lands in the upper country. He became a great leader in Loudoun affairs. Toward the end of his long life he, in 1796, deeded to his son Samuel the estate later known as Chestnut Hill and the latter, soon thereafter, built the beautiful mansion which became another of Loudoun's outstanding and stately family seats and which still stands, in all its old-time charm, not far from the Point of Rocks, in one of the most fertile and captivating regions of Loudoun. Through the marriage of Betsy Price, a granddaughter of Josias Clapham, to Thomas F. Mason of the Gunston Hall branch of that family (and therefore cousin to that Thomson Mason of Raspberry Plain who we are about to meet) the house and estate, until very recent years, continuously was occupied by these Mason descendants of Clapham.[51]

A few years after the death, in 1741, of Francis Aubrey, much of his great estate lying between the old Ridge Road (where it now[75] passes through Leesburg under the name of Loudoun Street) north to the Limestone Branch and from the Potomac westerly to the Catoctin Hills, came into the possession of Mrs. Ann Thomson Mason, widow of the third George of that ilk; thus introducing to our frontier of that day another of the most prominent of the Tidewater families and one which also was to play a very notable rôle in Loudoun for at least a century. This George Mason, at the age of forty-five, had been drowned while attempting to cross the Potomac in a sailboat in the year 1735. In 1721 he had married, as his second wife, Ann Thomson, daughter of Stevens Thomson of Hollins Hall, Staffordshire, England, who had served as Attorney-General of Virginia for some years during Queen Anne's reign. He, in turn, was the son of Sir William Thomson of the Middle Temple, a Sergeant at Law who, to his credit, in 1680 had had the courage to act as counsel for the defendants Tasborough and Price in the malodorous Popish Plot trials of disgraceful memory. By this second wife, Mason had six or seven children, of whom only three were to survive him: George his eldest son (for his first wife had been childless) who later was to build Gunston Hall and become the author of the famous Bill of Rights; Thomson, later to become at least a part-time resident of Loudoun and a famous lawyer in his day; and Mary, who, on the 11th April, 1751, was to marry Samuel Selden of Salvington in Stafford County, near Fredericksburg. She died at her mother's plantation Chipawamsic, on the 5th day of January, 1758, leaving two children, Samuel and Mary Mason Selden, the latter inheriting her Loudoun lands.

When George Mason met his accidental death he left no will. Under the Colonial law of primogeniture, his extensive holdings of land therefore went to his eldest son. According to the family historian, his younger children were left penniless. His widow thereupon bent all her energies to create an estate for each of them. Saving what she could, through every available economy and acting under the advice of her late husband's friends, she acquired "ten thousand acres of what was then called 'wild lands' in Loudoun County, for which she paid only a few shillings per acre." She,[76] during her lifetime, divided these lands between her two younger children "for the reason assigned by her that she did not wish her children to grow up with any sense of inequality among them in regard to fortune. The investment turned out a most fortunate one, and she thereby unwittingly made her younger children wealthier than their elder brother."[52]

It is thus so many of the beautiful modern estates between Leesburg and the Limestone Branch trace their title back to the Mason family. Mrs. Ann Thomson Mason died on the 13th November, 1762, "leaving a reputation among her connections and neighbours for great prudence and business capacity, united to the charms of an amiable, womanly, character." Her Rector, friend and relative, the Rev. John Moncure, described her as "a good woman, a great woman, and a lovely woman."[53]

Though she planted the Mason line in Loudoun, she herself does not appear ever to have lived in that rough and for those days remote frontier country. The actual seating of her line on her large purchase was left to her son Thomson who, after going to England to acquire his training in law and being admitted to the Middle Temple on the 14th August, 1751, as its records show, returned to Virginia, practiced law at Dumfries, became, perhaps, the most eminent lawyer of his time at the Virginia Bar and vigourously aided the American Revolution. He either had improved and extended the first Raspberry Plain home or, as Lancaster says, built a new one for he deeded the existing structure with the supporting land to his son Stevens Thomson Mason, confirming the grant in his will, together with the plate and furniture then in the dwelling; which indicates a more impressive home than the first building.

Thomson Mason died at Raspberry Plain on the 26th February, 1785, and was there buried; but the first mansion and burial place were not where the imposing modern house of the same name now stands but rather much to the north, near the fine spring and branch for a long time included in the present Selma lands, for the latter[77] estate was, of course, at that time and long afterward but another part of the extensive Mason holdings. It is of interest to note that this original Raspberry Plain holding was never acquired by Francis Aubrey nor was it part of Mrs. Ann Thomson Mason's purchase. On the contrary, it comprised a small grant, stated to be 322 acres, made by the Proprietor to one Joseph Dixon, a blacksmith, by patent dated the 2nd July, 1731.[54] Dixon, in turn, sold it to Aeneas Campbell by deed dated the 15th July, 1754, for a consideration nominally stated as "five shillings"—the old-time equivalent of our "One Dollar and other good and valuable considerations"—and Campbell was living there when commissioned the first sheriff of Loudoun in 1757. In the deed to him the plantation is described as being "On the branches of Limestone run called and known by the name of raspberry plain" and the grant goes on to give the exact location by metes and bounds. It apparently had been more carefully surveyed and found to have more area than first believed, for it is further described as containing "393 acres as appears by a survey thereof" and the grant specifically includes "all houses, buildings, orchards, ways, waters, water-courses," etc. Therefore Dixon may be credited with having built the first Raspberry Plain house, a matter long in doubt locally.[55] The estate was subsequently sold by Campbell and Lydia his wife to Thomson Mason, by deed dated the 15th day of May, 1760, for 500 pounds current money of Virginia.

Around 1750 there came from Scotland to this same country, north of the present Leesburg, that William Douglass who is to be so frequently mentioned by Nicholas Cresswell in his journal at the time of the Revolution. Colonel Douglass, as he afterward became, was the son of Hugh Douglass of Garalland in Ayshire who, in turn, was sixth in descent from the Earl of Douglas and also a descendant of the Campbell Barons of Loudoun, thus making the Douglass family of Loudoun County kinsfolk to the Earl of Loudoun for whom the county was to be named. Our William Douglass owned the estates of Garalland and Montressor in Loudoun, served as one of[78] her justices (1770) and as sheriff in 1782. He died in the latter year, leaving a will which was probated on the 24th September 1782.[56]

In the meanwhile the settlement of the Quakers was increasing rapidly in population. As early as 1736, it is said, Hannah Janney, the wife of Jacob Janney, held the services of her sect twice a week on a tree-stump in the forest "and on that spot a log house was built in 1751 and a meeting established" which was and still is known as the Goose Creek meeting. This log hut in 1765 was superseded by a stone building and as the congregation grew and the latter building was found too small, it was replaced, in 1817, by a brick meeting-house; but the old stone building of 1765 still stands and is owned by the Friends. Remodelled as a dwelling house it is now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Taylor.

A monument today marks the place, now in the village of Lincoln, where the good Hannah Janney worshipped. It stands in a grove of trees and reads:

"Here on a log in the unbroken forest Hannah Janney, wife of Jacob Janney, worshipped twice weekly in 1736. In 1738 Friends meetings were held in a private house once a month. Then a log meeting house. Then the old stone house in 1765 and the brick house in 1817."

By 1743 or 1744 the Friends had erected a church, known as the Fairfax Meeting, at Waterford, where as we have seen in a prior chapter (V), they soon had become very numerous and through their energy and thrift had really established that little settlement's early character and prosperity. This first meeting house of the Friends followed the fate which appeared to hover over so many of Virginia's early structures; it duly disappeared in flames and in its place in 1868 there was constructed the present substantial and commodious edifice, now only too seldom used because of the dwindling of the Quaker population there.

Concurrently another religious organization had been growing rapidly in the colonies. The Baptists had experienced the well-proved[79] truth that religious persecution is a most fertile soil for religious growth. "Magistrates and mobs, priests and Sheriffs, courts and parsons all vainly combined to divert them from their object," writes one of their historians. The Baptists in Virginia are said to have originated from three sources—emigrants in 1714, directly from England, settling in the southeasterly part of the Colony, others from Maryland about 1743 going to the northwesterly part, and still another group leaving New England about 1754 and going to what is now Berkely County in West Virginia. Between 1750 and 1755 John Gerrard, a Baptist preacher of Maryland, is said to have gone to Berkely County and thence journeyed over the Blue Ridge into the present Loudoun "where he found the people ready to listen to the proclamation of the gospel." The first Baptist church in Loudoun (and perhaps in Virginia as well) was built at Ketocton in 1756 or 1757, according to tradition, to be followed by a stone building in 1815 and then, in 1856, by the present brick edifice.

Until 1765 the Baptist congregations in Virginia were united to the Philadelphia Association but in that year obtained their dismissal and set about the task of building their own association in Virginia. Their first convention was held "in Ketocton in Loudoun" the old church there thus giving the first Baptist Association in Virginia its name. At that time the Colony had only four Baptist churches but all of them were represented at this first convention by the following delegates

Ketocton: John Marks and John Loyd.
Smith and Lynsville Creek: John Alderson.
Mill Creek: John Garrard and Isaac Sutton.
Broad Run: David Thomas and Joseph Metcalf.

A resolution was adopted to seek from the parent association in Philadelphia instructions for the guidance of the new organization. As their association grew in membership, it "was divided into two in 1789 by a line running from the Potomac a south course." The westerly portion retained the Ketocton name and that to the east was[80] known as the Chappawamsick. This division continued until 1792 when the districts were again united.[57]

It is believed that a congregation of the German Reformed Church at Lovettsville was organized before 1747 and possibly at once on the arrival of the first German settlers in the Lovettsville neighbourhood, about 1731. Again we are faced with the loss or destruction of early records; but the Rev. Michael Schlatter, one of the early founders of the Reformed Church in America, kept a journal from which it appears that he preached to a Reformed congregation in our German Settlement at the home of Elder William Wenner in the month of May, 1747. It is believed that there was, at a very early day, a building of logs used as a church and as a schoolhouse as well and that this continued to serve its congregation until 1810, when a larger brick building was erected which gave way in 1901 to another structure.[58]

By patent dated the 7th day of December, 1731, Rawleigh Chinn of Lancaster County acquired from Lord Fairfax 3,300 acres near Goose Creek and adjacent to a huge patent of 13,879 acres lying along the east side of Goose Creek which already had been granted to Colonel Charles Burgess, also of Lancaster. This grant to Chinn was on the Proprietor's usual terms, reserving to the latter "yearly and every year on the feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel the fee rent of one shilling sterling money for every fifty acres of Land hereby granted and so for a greater or lesser quantity"; and also meticulously reciting, "Royal mines excepted and a full third part of all lead, copper, tin, coals, iron mines and iron ore that shall be found thereon." Raleigh Chinn had married Esther, a daughter of Colonel Joseph Ball of Epping Forest, Lancaster County, an older sister of Mary Ball who was to marry Augustine Washington; and he, although never living on his purchase of forest lands in the "upper country," appears to have been so well pleased with his investment that he subsequently added heavily thereto; so that at the time of his death in August, 1741, he left to his children a large estate in[81] what later became Loudoun and Fauquier Counties. One of Raleigh Chinn's sons, Joseph, in January, 1763, sold to Leven Powell 500 acres of his inheritance and on a part of this land Colonel Powell later (1782) laid out the town of Middleburg. Thomas Chinn, a brother of Joseph, lived on the land on Goose Creek he had inherited from his father and according to family tradition, employed his young cousin, George Washington, to survey it for him, Washington occupying "an office on a beautiful hill," built for him by Chinn. Another surveyor who had run out the Chinn lines was Colonel Thomas Marshall who was the first county surveyor of Fauquier, subsequently became its burgess and sheriff, played a most gallant part in the Revolution and became the father of the famous Chief Justice.[59]

Leven Powell, at the time of his purchase from Joseph Chinn, was no stranger to Loudoun, for his father, William Powell, had acquired land in the neighbourhood of the present Middleburg as early as 1741. Although these lands had been repeatedly surveyed from the time of the original patents to Raleigh Chinn, Charles Burgess and others, in a day when forest surveys customarily ran to a red or white oak, an ash or a walnut tree, it may be supposed that boundary lines, in spite of "processioning," not infrequently became the subject of vigourous dispute; so in the Middleburg neighbourhood the Chinn and Powell heirs fell out, in 1811, over their dividing lines and the accuracy of the survey made in 1731 by John Barber for Charles Burgess, William Stamp, Thomas Thornton and Rawleigh Chinn the burgess. About 500 acres of arable land and 500 acres of forest were involved and hot was the legal warfare and very numerous the depositions from distant witnesses in Virginia and Kentucky obtained and filed in Loudoun's Superior Court. At the end, the litigation appears to have resolved itself into some sort of compromise; for on the 7th April, 1814, we find the Superior Court ordering "this Day came the Parties by their Attorneys and this suit is discontinued being agreed between the Parties."[60] But the[82] memory of their warfare still ruffled the litigants' minds; for upon the settlement being effected, "Sailor" Rawleigh Chinn, grandson and namesake of the patentee, proceeded to build upon the land set off to him "Mount Recovery" which, burned in the Civil War, was afterwards rebuilt and became the home of Mr. Thomas Dudley, subsequently being sold to Mr. Oliver Iselin; while Burr Powell, the other litigant, built on the tract set off to him a house he called Mount Defiance which in later years was owned by the Thatcher and Bishop families.

In 1744 John Hough, according to family tradition, settled in these Fairfax backwoods "and served for many years as surveyor for the vast estate of Lord Fairfax." He became the progenitor of the family which has become numerous in Loudoun and includes Emerson Hough, well known American novelist, though the latter was born in Iowa.[61] His surveys were much needed, for by 1750 the pressure of settlers for grants in these uplands had so increased that "Lord Fairfax's land office was crowded with applicants" we are told.[62]

CHAPTER VIII

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

We have come to the outbreak of that great world conflict between England and Prussia on the one side against France and Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony on the other which Fiske, writing before the devastation of 1914, called the most memorable war of modern times and which, involving three continents, ultimately passed the vast French territories in Canada and India to the British crown. In European history the contest is known, somewhat inadequately, as the Seven Years War and gave Frederick the Great of Prussia the fateful opportunity to demonstrate his extraordinary military genius; but in America it is known as the French and Indian War from the terrible alliance that the English colonists were forced there to face.

The menace of the French control of Canada had never oppressed the imagination of Virginia as it had that of New England and New York. Distance and lack of colonial unity tended to build in the minds of the Virginia Assembly the belief that it was a matter, to the Old Dominion at least, of secondary interest; though her royal governors, and especially Dinwiddie, recognized its true and pressing danger. Virginia claimed jurisdiction over a vast and largely unknown western territory, including much of what is now western Pennsylvania and that strategic point marking the confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, now covered by the city of Pittsburgh. The French in Canada were well aware of the huge military importance of this "gateway of the west" and, although at the time peace was supposed to exist between England and France, in 1753 sent a small expedition south to take possession of it. News of these Frenchmen in Virginia territory came to Governor Dinwiddie who, in turn, sent the twenty-one year old Washington, already a major in the militia of Virginia, to remonstrate and protest to their commander. On his journey Washington travelled the road to Vestal's Gap and crossed the Blue Ridge at that point. Though he faithfully delivered his message, the English protest was ignored, the French commander asserting that all that domain belonged to his King and[84] that the English had no territorial rights west of the mountains. Thereupon the energetic Dinwiddie decided that war or no war the French should be dislodged. A regiment of 300 Virginians was organized under Colonel Joshua Fry, with Major Washington as second in command, to take possession of the disputed "gateway" and fortify it.

This expedition, too, followed the road to Vestal's Gap and Washington, as was his habit, kept a journal of his experience. By the mischance of events this journal was to be captured later by the French at Fort Necessity; but in 1756, to bolster their claim that this English expedition was an unprovoked attack against a friendly power in time of peace, they published in French so much of it as served their purpose. Unfortunately the published portion did not include the march through Piedmont; but in Washington's accounting with the Virginia government we find these items:

"1754
"Apl. 6 To expences of the Regim^t at Edward
Thompson's in marching up 2″ 16.0
8 To Bacon for D^o of John Vestal at
Shenandoah & Ferriges over 1.9"[63]

Edward Thompson was a Quaker who lived near the present Hillsboro and who was to leave numerous descendants in Loudoun.

From the Shenandoah the little force pressed on into Western Maryland where at Will's Creek (the present Cumberland) then a trading station of the Ohio Company, 140 miles west from their objective, Colonel Fry was stricken with an illness which, a short time later, was to prove fatal. Leaving their colonel behind, the Virginia militia, now under the command of Major Washington, advanced very slowly cutting a narrow road through the forest and sending a small force ahead to begin work on the proposed fort at the confluence of the rivers. That work was hardly begun, however, when a greatly superior force of French and Indians, arriving suddenly on the scene from the north, drove the Virginians away, took[85] possession of the place and continued the fort's construction naming it, on completion, Fort DuQuesne after Canada's French Governor.

The retreating Virginians fell back through the woods until they joined Washington's main force, encamped at Great Meadows, and it was not long before Washington learned from his Indian scouts that a small party of enemy skirmishers was cautiously advancing to deliver a surprise attack. Washington promptly determined on a counter-surprise with such complete success that the Virginians killed Jumonville, the French leader, and nine of his followers and captured the remaining twenty-two. But Washington knew that a much larger force of French would soon attack him and that his position was precarious. With earthworks and logs he caused his men to hastily fortify their camp, grimly called by him Fort Necessity. They had not long to wait for the enemy. There soon emerged from the surrounding forest a force of six hundred French and Indians from Fort DuQuesne who, apparently not finding that the appearance of the fort or the reputation of its defenders invited an attack, settled down to a siege. Washington, though in the meanwhile reinforced, had not more than three hundred Virginians and about one hundred and fifty Indian auxiliaries; but more serious than his inequality of numbers were his rapidly dwindling supplies of food and ammunition. This was the situation which resulted in Washington's first and last surrender during his long military career. The French so little relished an attack on the fort or a longer siege that the English were allowed to march out and begin their retreat (4th of July, 1754) under arms and with full honors of war.

All of this began to look very much like a fresh outbreak of war between England and France; but more and worse was to follow before a formal declaration of war was made in 1756. The Duke of Cumberland, son of George II, then Captain General of the British Armies, laid plans for a great American campaign which, once for all, was to cripple the French power in the west. Three expeditions were devised against French strategic strongholds on the American continent: One was to proceed against Crown Point on Lake George, a second against Fort Niagara and the third to capture the newly[86] erected Fort DuQuesne. Major-General Edward Braddock, a veteran soldier thoroughly trained on Europe's battlefields, of unquestioned personal courage but abysmally ignorant of Indian warfare, was vested with the supreme command and with two British regiments, the 44th and 48th, set sail for America. The expedition landed at Alexandria where a general conference was immediately called at which were present, in addition to Braddock, Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, Governor Delancey and Colonel William Johnson of New York, Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, Governor Sharp of Maryland, Governor Morris of Pennsylvania and other leaders. To these men Braddock revealed his orders and plans and the governors received the King's instructions as to the part they were to play in the campaign.

Alexandria was a poor starting point for Fort DuQuesne. Far better would have been Philadelphia, offering as it did not only a shorter route but more abundant and easily available supplies. Maryland interests, seeking the advantage of the highway to the west which the army would make, brought pressure to bear to have the force go through that Colony. It was finally decided to send a part of the troops through Maryland and a part through Virginia, the divided army to come together again at Will's Creek where, in the meanwhile, a large and strongly palisaded fort had been built by Colonel James Innes under the instructions of Governor Dinwiddie. A force of 1,400 Virginians and Marylanders was raised and added to the English troops and "on the 8th and 9th of April the provincials and six companies of the 44th under command of Sir Peter Halkett set out for Winchester, Lieutenant Colonel Gage and four companies remaining to escort the artillery. On the 18th of April the 48th, under Colonel Dunbar, set out for Frederick."[64] Although General Braddock, with Major Washington on his staff, crossed over into Maryland at Rock Creek and went to Will's Creek through that Colony, never entering or even seeing the embryo Loudoun, the local stories are still repeated, and with the utmost confidence,[87] of the route he followed through that County and even where he spent the night. It was, as it still is, "Braddock's Army" in popular parlance and, as time passed, the commander's presence with the march through Virginia became a part of its story.

Had the supreme command of the expedition been vested in Halkett, rather than Braddock, one may reasonably believe that there would have been a very different outcome. A trained and able soldier, no less courageous than his chief, he was more cautious, more susceptible to new ideas and methods and far less arbitrary than lay in Braddock's nature to be. He learned to respect the dearly bought and superior knowledge of Indian fighting traits possessed by the provincials and wished to follow their recommendations that to Braddock, with his unbounded confidence in iron discipline, simply savoured of colonial ignorance and lack of military courage. Loudoun should remember Halkett not only as the commander of the march through her domain but as a brave and devoted soldier as well.

"Sir Peter Halkett of Pitferran, Fifeshire, a baronet of Nova Scotia," writes Sargent, "was the son of Sir Peter Wedderburne of Gosford, who, marrying the heiress of the ancient family of Halkett, assumed her name."[65] Our Sir Peter had married Lady Amelia Stewart, second daughter of Francis, 8th Earl of Moray, by whom he had three sons. Of these, James, the youngest, was a subaltern in his father's regiment and accompanied him on the expedition.

Of the Virginia troops serving in this campaign an effort has been made to identify such as came from the incipient Loudoun. All the Virginians were directly under the command of Captain Waggoner. As Loudoun was then a part of Fairfax her men were, of course, listed as from the latter county.

In March, 1756, the Virginia Legislature passed as its first act [66] an emergency measure from which we learn the names of certain soldiers from the then undivided Fairfax but from which side of Difficult Run each man came does not appear, or as to whether they went[88] on Braddock's expedition or served nearer home, then or subsequently. The small amount of compensation awarded to each indicates a period of active service too short to have permitted them to be at the battle. Probably they were used east of the Blue Ridge.

That not all of the Virginia soldiers of the expedition of 1755 were enthusiastic volunteers is suggested by the passage of Chapter II of the session of 1754 which states in its preamble that as the King had instructed his lieutenant governor to raise soldiers for the expedition against the French on the Ohio and that there were "in every county and corporation within this Colony, able bodied persons, fit to serve his majesty, and who follow no lawful calling or employment" the justices of the peace, through the sheriffs, were ordered to forcibly enlist them, provided they were not voters or indentured servants![67] To raise money for the campaign an act was passed in May, 1755, instituting a public lottery with a first prize of £2,000 "current money" and many other prizes amounting altogether to £20,000 "current money."[68]

The route to be followed by Halkett's command is given in Braddock's Orderly Book as follows:

Thus from the date of entry, only two days after the last of Halkett's[89] men had left the camp, we learn that the route given was the one ordered followed, rather than a report of one that had been pursued; but as it carefully describes the main northern road from Alexandria to Winchester it is safe to assume that the troops held to the course laid down for them.

The "Old Court House" was the first courthouse of Fairfax County built about 1742 and in use about ten years until another was built in Alexandria. Thus at the time of the march it was no longer used for the purpose for which it had been built. It stood near the present Tyson's Corner and in recent years its site has been marked by an appropriate inscription.

The "Mr. Colemans on Sugar Land Run" was the house of Richard Coleman who was thereafter in 1756 licensed by the Fairfax Court to keep an Ordinary there. It stood where the road then crossed Sugarland Run at the mouth of Colvin Run.

The "Mr. Miners" was the plantation of Nicholas Minor who served as a captain in this war and who soon was to lay out the town of Leesburg on part of his estate. It was known as Fruitland and the residence was situated on a knoll on the south side of the road about a mile east of the present Leesburg where a later building but bearing the same name now stands. There Miner in connection with his other activities, operated a distillery, probably for making brandy from peaches, apples and persimmons; according to General John Mason, a son of the famous George of Gunston Hall "the art of distilling from grain was not then among us" and he spoke of the time of his boyhood—a period well after 1755. A later writer comments: "The choice of such camping places as this perhaps explains in some measure the frequent court-martials in the army and the liberal rewards of from 600 to 1,000 lashes to recreant soldiers for drunkenness and for giving liquor to the Indians who accompanied the march or whom they met on the way."[69] There is much evidence that the British regulars, who had been recently recruited, frequently were disciplined for infraction of military rules and the disciplinary[90] measures employed in British armies of that day were not gentle.

The "Mr. Thompson ye Quaker" we have already met in the preceding year when Washington, in Fry's expedition against the French at the "Gateway," noted his "expences." He lived, it will be recalled, in the locality which is now Hillsboro.

The "Mr. They's ye Ferry at Shanh" was, it is believed, in error for "Mr. Key's" and was at the Key's Gap Ferry.

All of this gives very little local detail. Fortunately that is more freely supplied from another and fortuitous source. There was attached to Braddock's expedition, when it left England, a certain commissary who had a widowed sister, one Mrs. Browne. She accompanied her brother from London to Fort Cumberland and, following the valuable eighteenth century habit, kept a journal which in 1924 was owned by Mr. S. A. Courtauld of the Howe, Halstead, Essex, and a photostatic copy of which has been acquired by the Library of Congress.[70] This journal or diary runs from the 17th November, 1754, to the 19th January, 1757. When Braddock and his men departed from Alexandria in April he had a number of soldiers too ill to travel. These he left there temporarily in charge of a force of "1 officer and 40 men" and the commissary (Mrs. Browne's brother), and Mrs. Browne stayed with them to help nurse the invalids. By June the sick men had so far recovered that they moved to join the main force, following the old Ridge (Alexandria-Winchester) Road over which Halkett and his men had marched before them. Here follows a full copy of Mrs. Browne's journal entries from her entrance into present Loudoun until she reached the Shenandoah:

1755. "June the 2. At Break of Day the Drum beat. I was extreemly sleepy but got up, and as soon as our Officer had eat 6 Eggs and drank a dram or two and some Punch we march'd; but, my Waggon being in the Rear the Day before, my Coachman insisted that it was not right that Madam Browne should be behind, and if they did not give way they should feel the soft end of his Whip. He[91] gain'd his Point and got in Front. The Roads are so Bad that I am almost disjointed. At 12 we halted at Mr. Coleman's, pitched our markeys and dined on Salt Gammon,[71] nothing better to be had.

"June the 3. At 3 in the Morning was awak'd by the Drum, but was so stiff that I was at a loss to tell whether I had any Limbs. I breakfasted in my waggon and then sent of in front; at which all the rest were very much enrag'd, but to no Purpose for my Coachman told them that he had but one Officer to Obey and she was in his Waggon, and it was not right she should be blinded with Dust. My Brother the Day before left his Cloak behind, so sent his Man back for it on his Horse, and march'd on Foot. On the Road met with Mr. Adams a Parson [72] who left his Horse & padded with them on Foot. We halted at Mr. Minors. We order'd some Fowls for Dinner but not one to be had, so was obliged to set down to our old Dish Gammon & Greens. The Officer and the Parson replenish'd their Bowl so often that they began to be very joyous, untill their Servant told them that their Horses were lost, at which the Parson was much inrag'd and pop'd out an Oath but Mr. Falkner said 'Never mind your Horse, Doctor, but have you a Sermon ready for next Sunday?' I being the Doctor's country woman he mad me many Compts. and told me he should be very happy if he could be better acquainted with me, but hop'd when I came that way again I would do him the Honour to spend some Time at his House. I chatted til 11 and then took my leave and left them a full Bowl before them.

"June the 4. At break of Day my Coachman came and tap'd my Chamber Door and said Madam all is ready and it is right early. I went to my Waggon and we moved on. Left Mr. Falkner behind in Pursuit of his Horse. March'd 14 Miles and halted at an old sage Quaker's with silver Locks. His Wife on my coming in accosted me in the following manner: 'Welcome Friend set down, thou seem's full Bulky to travel, but thou art young and that will enable thee. We were once so ourselves but we have been married 44 Years & may[92] say we have lived to see the Days that we have no Pleasure therein.' We had recourse to our old Dish Gammon, nothing else to be had; but they said they had some Liquor they called Whiskey which was made of Peaches. My Friend Thompson being a Preacher, when the soldiers came in as the Spirit mov'd him, held forth to them and told them the great Virtue of Temperance. They all stared at him like Pigs, but had not a word to say in their justification.

"June the 5. My Lodgings not being very clean, I had so many close Companions call'd Ticks that deprived me of my Night's Rest, but I indulg'd till 7. We halted this Day all the Nurses Baking Bread and Boiling Beef for the March to Morrow. A fine Regale 2 Chickens with Milk and water to Drink, which my friend Thompson said was fine temperate Liquor. Several things lost out of my Waggon, amongst the rest they took 2 of my Hams, which my Coachman said was an abomination to him, and if he could find out who took them he would make them remember taking the next.

"June the 6. Took my leave of my Friend Thompson, who bid me farewell. A great Gust of Thunder and Lightning and Rain, so that we were almost drown'd. Extreem bad Roads. We pass'd over the Blue Ridge which was one continual mountain for 3 miles. Forg'd through 2 Rivers. At 7 we halted at Mr. Key's, a fine Plantation. Had for Dinner 2 Chickens. The Soldiers desired my Brother to advance them some Whisky for they told him he had better kill them at once than to let them dye by Inches, for without they could not live. He complied with their Request and it soon began to operate; they all went to dancing and bid defiance to the French. My Friend Gore" (the coachman) "began to shake a Leg. I ask'd him if it was consistent as a member of his Society to dance; he told me that he was not at all united with them, and that there were some of his People who call'd themselves Quakers and stood up for their Church but had no more religion in them than his Mare. I told him I should set him down as a Ranter."

But to return to Halkett and the troops under his immediate command. From Winchester they proceeded to the new fort at Will's[93] Creek which Braddock, upon his arrival, named Fort Cumberland in honour of his captain general. Here the main detachments of the expedition came together again in accordance with the plans made in Alexandria. The troops were given a short rest after their long march, the final plans were developed and on the 7th, 8th and 9th of June the army resumed its march to the west, widening the path through the woods made by Washington and his men the year before and hauling its artillery over the mountains with the utmost difficulty. So slow was their progress that Braddock decided to send on a large advance party, more lightly equipped, leaving the others to bring on the greater part of the supplies and baggage.

In contrast to Braddock's unbounded assurance, Halkett seems to have had a strong premonition of the impending disaster and his own tragic fate. Lowdermilk, in his excellent History of Cumberland, describes his dejection the night before the battle:

"Sir Peter Halkett was low spirited and depressed; he comprehended the importance of meeting the wily red skins with their own tactics, and while he urged the General to beat the bushes over every foot of ground from the camp to the Fort, he had little hope of seeing his advice put into effect; when he wrapped his mantle about him that night as he lay upon his soldier's bed his soul was filled with the darkest forebodings for the morrow, which he felt would close his own career as well as that of many another gallant soldier, a presentiment which was sadly realized."

Upon the following day, the 9th of July, the advance party of British, now making better progress, pressed on to a point five or six miles from Fort DuQuesne where they encountered the awaiting French and Indians. Against such British strength of numbers and equipment the French had one chance and well they knew it lay in meeting the attacking force in the forest before it could bring its artillery to play on their fortification. The mass of the scarlet-coated British troops were in close formation in the open; the French and Indians hid themselves behind the surrounding trees. As the first bullets poured into their ranks the British could see no foe and Braddock, deaf to the entreaties of the Virginians, insisted that his troops[94] hold their ranks in the unprotected and open clearing. The provincials scattered and fought the foe in its own manner from behind every tree and mound they could find to shelter them; but Braddock, wholly immune to fear or reason himself, continued to hold his regulars together, in his anger beating back with his sword into the ranks those seeking cover. Even so the situation, impossible though it were rapidly becoming, might have been saved by the desperate and determined efforts of the provincials who had found a small ravine or ditch from which they were able to deliver an effective flanking fire against the French; but as the latter began to waver and the Americans left their protection to charge, the panic-stricken regulars fired upon them, killing and wounding a great number. It was the end. Braddock, who throughout the fighting had shewn the most reckless and obstinate courage and had had his horses killed from under him again and again, now received a mortal wound and the surviving English broke into a wild and disorderly retreat. Had the French and their allies pressed their advantage, hardly one of their foe would have escaped death or capture; but the Indian allies of the French, when the British fled, addressed themselves to killing the wounded and robbing and scalping the dead, thus giving the English their chance of flight, disorderly and panic-stricken, back over the road they had come. Braddock, crushed with the completeness of his defeat, died on the fourth day of the retreat and was buried in the roadway to protect his body from the Indian savages. How overwhelming was the French victory is shewn by the English record that of the 1,386 men who were under Braddock in the fight, only 459 escaped. That the British regulars stood their ground bravely in the face of most difficult conditions and stupid leadership there seems no question. But the greater praise went to the Americans who inflicted far more damage on the foe; and particularly to their leader Washington who with cool courage was everywhere encouraging his men in the fight and though his clothing was pierced repeatedly with rifle balls, he escaped wholly unwounded.

During the battle Halkett was shot and killed and his son James, seeing him fall and rushing to his aid, at once met the same fate.[95] Both bodies were scalped and robbed and then left where they fell. Three years later Halkett's eldest son, the then Sir Peter Halkett, a major in the 42nd Regiment, joined General Forbes' new and successful expedition against Fort DuQuesne, especially to seek some trace of the fate of his father and brother. With friendly Indian help the bodies were found and identified and given a military burial nearby.

As the defeated English retreated to the east, the story of the calamity spread terror and dismay among the more westerly settlers. In Virginia the people in the valley were panic-stricken and in great numbers fled over the Blue Ridge to the Piedmont counties, spreading their terror among the people there. Washington wrote that he learned from Captain Waggoner who, as we have seen, had had command of the Virginia troops and had been wounded in the battle "that it was with difficulty he passed the Ridge for crowds of people, who were flying as if every moment was death." The fear and restlessness continued among the colonists on both sides of the Blue Ridge until General Forbes, as noted, in 1758 led his force to Fort DuQuesne and took possession of what was left by the French who burned and abandoned it at his approach. From then until after the Revolution this former outpost of France, under its new name of Fort Pitt, remained in the hands of the English government.

On the 1st day of September, 1758,[73] an act was passed in Virginia to pay arrears to "forces in the pay of this colony" and to raise money therefor. Section 5 recites:

"And whereas several companies of the militia were lately drawn out into actual service, for the defense and protection of the frontiers of this colony, whose names, and the time they respectively continued in the said service, together with the charge of provisions found for the use of the said militia are contained in the schedule to this act annexed....

On page 217 of the same act under the head of "Fairfax County" appear the following items, the names suggesting that the list was prepared prior to the time of the setting off of Loudoun from Fairfax and for services prior to those above listed:

The names of many other soldiers are given with the compensation awarded each. It is quite possible that among them were men who resided in that part of Fairfax which, at the time of the passage of the act, had been set off as Loudoun.

CHAPTER IX

ORGANIZATION OF LOUDOUN AND THE FOUNDING OF LEESBURG

In the Virginia of England's rule, the vestry of a Parish "divided with the County Court the responsibility of local government, having as their especial charge the maintenance of religion and the oversight of all things pertaining thereto in the domain of charity and morals."[74] The parish was a territorial subdivision with large civil as well as ecclesiastical powers and duties and when, through increasing population, a parish came to be divided, in those days of expanding settlement, it usually was followed by the creation of a new county. As has been noted in a prior chapter, Truro Parish, then coextensive with Fairfax County, was divided in 1748 by the Assembly setting off the upper part thereof, above Difficult Run, as Cameron Parish, thus indicating the early organization of a new county. But the politicians of Tidewater were beginning to look askance at the rapid increase of new counties in the upper country, fearing a diminution of their influence and control and perhaps there was some opposition in Fairfax itself. A petition presented to the Assembly in 1754 by the people of Cameron that they be formed into a new county resulted in a bill being passed to that end which, however, was disapproved by the Council. Again a petition was presented to the next Assembly with no better success; but on the 8th day of June, 1757 a bill was passed creating the new county. It reads as follows:

"I. Whereas many inconveniences attend the upper inhabitants of the County of Fairfax by reason of the large extent of said county, and their remote situation from the court house, and the said inhabitants have petitioned this present general assembly that the said county be divided: Be it, therefore enacted, by the Lieutenant-Governor, Council and Burgesses of this present General Assembly, and it is hereby enacted, by the authority of the same, that from and after the 1st day of July next ensuing the said county of Fairfax be[98] divided into two counties, that is to say: All that part thereof, lying above Difficult run, which falls into the Patowmack river, and by a line to be run from the head of the same run, a straight course, to the mouth of Rocky run, shall be one distinct county, and called and known by the name of Loudoun: And all that part below the said run and course, shall be another distinct county, and retain the name of Fairfax.

"II. And for the due administration of justice in the said county of Loudoun, after the same shall take place: Be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that after the first day of July a court for the said county of Loudoun be constantly held by the justices thereof, upon the second Tuesday in every month in such manner as by the laws of this colony is provided, and shall be by their commission directed.

"III. Provided always, that nothing herein contained shall be constructed to hinder the sheriff or collector of the said county of Fairfax, as the same now stands entire and undivided, from collecting and making distress for any public dues, or officers fees, which shall remain unpaid by the inhabitants of said county of Loudoun at the time of its taking place; but such sheriff or collector shall have the same power to collect or distrain for such dues and fees, and shall be answerable for them in the same manner as if this act had never been made, any law, usage or custom to the contrary thereof in any wise notwithstanding.

"IV. And be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid, that the court of the said county of Fairfax shall have jurisdiction of all actions and suits, both in law and equity, which shall be depending before them at the time the said division shall take place; and shall and may try and determine all such actions and suits, and issue process and award execution in any such action or suit in the same manner as if this act had never been made, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding.

"V. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that out of every hundred pounds of tobacco, paid in discharge of quit rents, secretary's, clerk's, sheriff's, surveyor's, or other officers fees,[99] and so proportionately for a greater or lesser quantity, there shall be made the following abatements or allowances to the payer, that is to say: For tobacco due in the county of Fairfax ten pounds of tobacco, and for tobacco due in the county of Loudoun twenty pounds of tobacco; and that so much of the act of the assembly, intitled, An Act for amending the staple of tobacco, and preventing frauds in his Majesty's customs, as relates to anything within the purview of this act, shall be and is hereby repealed and made void."[75]

The boundaries of the new county thus fixed have since that time been changed but once, when in 1798, a part of the originally constituted Loudoun was, by act of the Legislature, returned to Fairfax as later will be noted.[76]

Thus, from the formation of Northumberland County in 1647, it had taken 110 years for a sufficient population to penetrate, settle and develop in the backwoods to justify the organization of Loudoun. At first the creation of new counties out of the early Northumberland had been rapid. Lancaster along the Rappahannock was formed in 1651 and Westmoreland along the Potomac in 1653. Out of Westmoreland came Stafford in 1664. Then, so far as the line of descent of Loudoun is concerned, there is a long wait. Indian warfare and Indian domination of the upper country effectually held back settlement until Spotswood's epochal treaty of 1722. With the withdrawal of the Indians the pressure from Tidewater rapidly had its effect. Out of the Stafford "backwoods" and those of King George to the south was organized in 1731 Prince William with a disputed western boundary, the Proprietor claiming much of the Shenandoah Valley and the Virginia government holding to the Blue Ridge but the act discretely leaving that question untouched. In 1742 the territory above "Occoquan and Bull Run and from the head of the main branch of Bull Run by a straight course" to Ashley's Gap became the County of Fairfax of which, as shown, Loudoun in 1757 was born. Her contiguous county Fauquier was, by contrast, taken directly from Prince William in 1759.

[100]It would have been wholly appropriate to have named the new county Lee or Carter, honoring families and individuals which had been so active in its development but the Lees then loved the Carters not at all nor the Carters the Lees and doubtlessly each would, and perhaps did, prevent the honor going to the other. So it came about that the lusty infant became the namesake of a man whose fame, so far as Virginia and the other American Colonies were concerned, was highly ephemeral. On the 17th February, 1756, in the winter following Braddock's defeat, John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudoun, had been appointed Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of Virginia and, on the 20th of the month following, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in America. He seems to have owed his selection to his own and his family's influence with Court and ministry; certainly nothing in his earlier career had logically earned the bestowal of a paramount command in such a critical period for Britain. Loudoun, the only son of the third Earl of that ilk and his wife the Lady Margaret Dalrymple (only daughter of John 1st Earl of Stair) had been born in 1705 and succeeded his father in the title and estates in 1731. From 1734, until his death in 1782, he was one of the representative peers of Scotland. At the age of twenty-two he entered the army and had been appointed Governor of Sterling Castle in 1741, becoming aide-de-camp to the king in 1743. When the Jacobite rebellion broke out in 1745 he had been a staunch supporter of the House of Hanover, raising a regiment of Highlanders of which he became colonel and which later was cut to pieces at the Battle of Preston. Loudoun was one of the few who came out of the fight unscathed and, shewing that upon occasion he was capable of energy as well as loyalty, promptly he raised a force of more than two thousand new soldiers.

When he arrived in New York on the 23rd July, 1756, he found affairs in great confusion. After the care with which Braddock's campaign had been planned for him and the disastrous outcome, the home authorities were now slow to adopt measures to cope with the crisis. Not only Fort DuQuesne but Forts Oswego and Ontario were held by the French, aggressive and confident from their repeated[101] successes. After spending a year in surveying the situation, Loudoun headed an expedition against Louisburg, going as far as Halifax and then, though a caution made to appear the more excessive by inevitable comparison with the dash and reckless courage of Pepperell's earlier and sensationally successful expedition, returned to New York without striking a blow. He had incurred great unpopularity earlier in New York and now in Halifax although in the former, at least, his measures of quartering troops and interference with commerce fairly could be defended on the ground of military necessity. Of more unfortunate importance, the ineptitude and dilatory inefficiency of his Louisburg campaign had drained its defenders from the Hudson Valley, thus permitting a successful and disastrous invasion of the Province of New York by the French and their Indians and Loudoun was peremptorily recalled to England (1757), General Jeffrey Amherst being sent over to take his place. Loudoun's indecision inspired Benjamin Franklin's famous epigram which all down the years, to the few who remember Loudoun, remains inseparably associated with his name: that, "he was like King George upon the signposts, always on horseback but never advancing." There was, however, at least one voice publicly raised on his behalf; an effort was made in England to defend his conduct in America through an anonymous pamphlet published in London the following year entitled "The Conduct of a Noble Commander in America Impartially Reviewed with the genuine Causes of the Discontents at New York and Hallifax," one of the few surviving copies of which is now lodged in the Library of Congress. And it was for this British general with but a year of American experience (and that far from glorious) who never, so far as it is known, set foot on Virginia's soil that the fairest of Piedmont's counties was named during those brief months when his ascendant star glowed with an all too temporary brilliance and hope and expectation ran high. Had the county been organized when first proposed or had its formation been further postponed, it is a fair presumption that another name would have been chosen.

Lord Loudoun's American record seemingly did not end his influence in London. In 1762, when war broke out between England[102] and Spain, he was appointed second in command, under Lord Tyrawley, of the British troops sent to Portugal. As he never married, his title upon his death at Loudoun Castle on the 27th April, 1782, passed to his cousin, James Mure Campbell, a grandson of the second Earl.

Of the first officials of Loudoun County, the following men by commission of the Virginia Council, dated the 24th May, 1757, became its first court or governing body: Anthony Russell, Fielding Turner, James Hamilton, Aeneas Campbell, Nicholas Minor, William West, of the Quorum, Richard Coleman, Josias Clapham, George West, Charles Tyler, John Moss, Francis Peyton and John Mucklehany. These men may be taken as outstanding residents.

We can learn from the early records something concerning the actual procedure followed in organizing the new county. The first entry in the volume of Court Orders is a record on the 12th day of July, 1757, that a Commission of the Peace and Dedimus of the county directed to the last mentioned "Gentlemen, justices of the said County was produced and openly Read, and pursuant to the Dedimus" that they took the oaths prescribed by law.

The first county clerk was Charles Binns who served thirty-nine years in that capacity, from 1757 to 1796; to be succeeded by his son Charles Binns, Jr., who, in his turn, served forty-one years or from 1796 to 1837, a record indicating that Loudoun had been fortunate in the selection for this office. It is traditional in the county that the first clerk's office was at Rokeby, the present country seat of Mr. and Mrs. B. Franklin Nalle.

The first sheriff was Aeneas Campbell who came to the then Fairfax County from Saint Mary's County, Maryland, just in time to become a lieutenant in that Fairfax company in the French War captained by Nicholas Minor and whose home was at Raspberry Plain as already has been shown.[77] It is also locally related that the first jail was a small brick building about twelve feet square, in his yard there. A ducking-spring was also a part of the new sheriff's[103] equipment at his home and was used to temper the enthusiasm of females too greatly addicted to mischievous talking. A woman duly convicted of idle gossip and slandering her neighbours, was generally fined in tobacco; if the fine were not paid by her husband or the dame herself, she was taken to the ducking-spring, where a long pole had a chair with arms attached to its end. The talkative lady was then tied in the chair, the pole lowered and she was immersed in the pond a sufficient number of times to cause her ruefully to remember her experience and, let us hope, amend her conduct. Alas! Alas! Tempora mutantur.

Campbell's bond as sheriff occupies the place of honor in the first Deed Book of the county on page one. He and his two sureties, Anthony Russell and James Hamilton, bind themselves "unto our Sovereign Lord King George the second in the sum of one thousand pounds Current Money to be paid to our said Lord the King his Heirs and Successors." Tobacco as money was all well enough in Virginia but apparently was not appreciated by Royalty across the sea.

Aeneas Campbell was one of the leading spirits in the new county. Not only was he its first sheriff but he built its first courthouse, as later noted, and was an original trustee of Leesburg when that town was "erected." In those days the outstanding men in a community were chosen for public office and the frequency of his name on the records unquestionably confirms his influential prominence. His later career was interesting. After he sold Raspberry Plain to Thomson Mason in 1760, we find him, in 1776, back in Maryland and busily engaged in the work of the Revolution. He became captain of the First Maryland Battalion of the Flying Camp in July of that year and on the 18th of the month in Frederick County, is credited with presenting to that command thirty-two men, including his son Aeneas Campbell, Jr., (who held the rank of cadet) all of whom were then reviewed and passed (accepted?) by Major John Fulford.[104][78] His descendants, including the Giddings family of Leesburg, proudly retain the tradition that Campbell raised and accoutred this force entirely at his own expense, setting an example of patriotism which Loudoun should remember.

The county lieutenant, first officer in rank but, in the present instance, the last to be chosen, was not commissioned until December, 1757, when Francis Lightfoot Lee, son of our old friend Thomas Lee, was selected and settled himself on lands which he had inherited from his father and which were within the boundaries of the new county. His residence in Loudoun, however, did not prove to be permanent, for upon his marriage in 1769, to Miss Rebecca Tayloe of Mount Airy, he removed to Menokin on the Rappahannock where he continued to reside until his death, without issue, in the winter of 1797; but as a result of his frontier experience he was always thereafter called "Loudoun" by his brothers.[79] In addition to his position as county lieutenant he and James Hamilton served as the first Burgesses from Loudoun and continuously so acted for a number of years.

The first county surveyor was recognized at the court held on the 9th August, 1757, when "George West, Gent. produced a Commission to be Surveyor of this County and thereupon he took the Oath directed by the Act of Assembly and entered into and acknowledged his Bond to the President and Masters of the College of William & Mary in Virginia with Charles Binns & Lee Massey his Sureties which is Ordered to be recorded."

The first attorneys to qualify to practice law before the Loudoun Court were Hugh West, Benjamin Sebastian, William Elzey, and James Keith.

Few institutions of the Northern Neck of those days of slow travel and thin settlement were more important than the inns or as they are usually designated "ordinaries;" and the keeper of an Ordinary was generally a man of parts and consequence in his community. The matter of cost of food, drink and lodging in the public inns was[105] a subject close to the heart of the eighteenth century colonial and Loudoun's Court lost no time in taking control of the ordinaries within its boundaries. Already several were in existence. As early as 1740 William West had acquired land on the Carolina Road near the present Aldie and soon had constructed a dwelling and was keeping an ordinary there. The Loudoun Court on the 9th May, 1759, gave him a license to keep his ordinary for a year—presumably to be annually renewed—but he had been acting as the local Boniface for many years before that. The first Loudoun license for an ordinary, however, was granted on the 10th August, 1757, "to James Coleman to keep Ordinary at his House in this County (at the Sugar Lands) for one Year he with Security having given Bond as the Law directs;" but Coleman, too, had been conducting an ordinary at his residence before then.

On the 12th September, 1759, the court licensed John Moss to keep an Ordinary at Leesburg.

But on the 9th day of August, 1757, the day before it granted its first license to keep ordinary to James Coleman, the court laid down its rules and regulations for Loudoun inn keepers. That the gentlemen justices gave far more detailed attention to the charges for alcoholic refreshment than to the other matters regulated may or may not have been mere coincidence.

"The Court," so runs the record, "proceeded to rate the Liquor for this County as follows:

"Ordered that the respective Ordinary keepers in this County do sell according to the above rates in Money or Tobacco at the rate of 12s 6d per hundred and that they do not presume to demand more of any Person whatsoever."

The first deed recorded in Loudoun but on page 2 of the first volume of Deed Books, is dated the 6th day of August, 1757, from Andrew Hutchison "of Loudoun County and Cameron Parish" and runs to his sons John and Daniel, also of Loudoun; it conveys a piece of land "containing by estimation seven hundred acres more or less whereon now lives the said John Huchison and to be equally divided between them." Thus another old and well-known Loudoun family is introduced.

The first will recorded was that of "Evan Thomas of Virginia Coleney in Loudoun County." It was proved at the court held on the 8th day of November, 1757, and its record is followed by a long and interesting inventory of his estate.

For some time prior to the organization of the county there had been a small backwoods settlement, perhaps only a few scattered log houses, near the intersection of the Carolina and old Ridge Roads. This tiny hamlet had dignified itself with the name of George Town[107] in rugged loyalty to King George the Second. Deck and Heaton say that in 1757 a little fort was built there. Protection from attack by the French and Indians was deemed necessary to every frontier settlement. Nicholas Minor, who was a captain in the Virginia Militia and in active service at this period, may have had a hand in the building of this fort and it is probable that he was in military command there. He lived on his nearby plantation of Fruitland and his estate included some sixty acres or more at the intersection of the Carolina and Ridge Roads. In the year 1756, it is believed, he employed John Hough (who, as stated in the last chapter, had in 1744 settled in these backwoods and was acting as a surveyor for Lord Fairfax) to survey this land for a town site. Hough thereupon made his survey and perhaps mapped his first rough draft in 1757, probably making a more carefully detailed copy in 1759, after the establishment of the Town had been formally authorized by the Legislature and Minor had sold off a number of the lots as plotted on the plan. If so, this first rough draft is now lost or has been destroyed and the copy of 1759 was destined for many years also to be involved in mysterious disappearance. Though constantly in use for the first forty years of its existence, through oversight or negligence neither this 1759 "edition," nor the original draft, had been entered on the county records. Then in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the 1759 copy was used as an exhibit in the suit of Cavan vs. Murray, involving land adjacent to the town and in 1798 folded up and filed with the county clerk together with other exhibits in that litigation. The story of its disappearance and recovery is attached to a photostatic copy of the map now before me:

"For generations the mystery of its disappearance has been a subject of speculation and many believed that it had been withdrawn from the public records into private lands, and there held or possibly lost. In November 1928, the bundle containing the papers in the above suit was opened by Charles F. Cochran, and the old plat brought to light, just 130 years after it had been placed there. The paper was worn through at many of the creases, being completely in two through the middle, many minute bits were turned under or[108] hanging only by a shred, and in places there has been shrinkage. Through the courtesy of Dr. Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress, and Col. Lawrence Martin, Chief of the Division of Maps, and in return for permission to file a photostat of the plat in the Library of Congress, the plat was mounted by Mr. William F. Norbeck, the Library's expert in the restoration of old maps. It was due to Mr. Henry B. Rust of Rockland, near Leesburg that the extended search of the Loudoun County records was made, in which the plat was brought to light, and he has had it framed."[80]

This framed map of 1759 was presented to the county, by delivery to Mr. B. W. Franklin, then county clerk of Loudoun, on the 30th December, 1928, by Mr. E. Marshall Rust, the brother of Henry B. Rust.

Upon the organization of the county, the matter of location and establishment of a county seat had to be determined. It was not, however, until the 15th June, 1758, that the Council of the Colony, by deciding to locate the courthouse of Loudoun on the lands of Nicholas Minor on the old Carolina Road near the crossing of the Alexandria-Keys Gap Highway, fixed the importance of what was to be known as Leesburg. The order of the Council reads:

"The Council having this day taken under Consideration the most proper Place for establishing the Court House of Loudoun County, it appearing to them that the plantation of Captain Nicholas Minor was the most convenient place and agreeable to the Generality of the People in that County, it was their opinion, and accordingly Ordered, That the Court House for the said County be fixed on the land of the said Minor."

When this order of the Council was made on the 15th June, 1758, the Loudoun Court, as we have seen, had been duly organized and from time to time was meeting for the performance of its duties since the preceding 12th July. Where these early meetings were held does not appear on the records, nor so far as I can learn, is now known. The record of the court's sittings at the time generally begin[109] "At a court held at the courthouse" so that the presumption arises that, for the time being, the residence of one of its members may have been used for that purpose. Apparently the court was becoming impatient to have an official home and weary of the Council's delay; for at the court's session of the 11th day of July, 1758, or four days before the date of the Council's order, we find that it is, by the Loudoun Court,

"Ordered that the Sheriff of this County Advertise for Workmen to build a Courthouse to meet here at the next Court to agree for the same."

The proposed edifice was so carefully described that we can get a very clear idea of its appearance from the specifications recorded at this session of the 9th August, 1758. It was to be a brick building 28 x 40, with a jury room added sixteen feet square, having "an outside chimney and fireplace, eight feet in the clear from the foundation to the surface, two feet from the surface to the water table four feet, from thence to the joist ten feet." There significantly follows "and also a Prison and Stocks of the same Dimensions as those in Fairfax County for this County."[81]

"Ordered that the courthouse for this County be Built on a Lott of Captain Nicholas Minor's No. 27 and 28 and that he convey the same to William West and James Hamilton Gent. as Trustees in Fee for the use of the County."[82]

Nevertheless no deed from Minor actually was obtained until nearly three years later, as will subsequently appear. That shrewd and careful Founder of Leesburg well might have been unwilling to give to the county two of the best lots in his new subdivision until he was abundantly protected; so the deed was not given until the new courthouse was built and any lingering doubt removed from his mind that the county's project would be carried out. At the court's session of the 13th September, 1758, a contract to build the courthouse[110] was confirmed to "Aeneas Campbell Gent." for the sum of 365 pounds current money to be paid in two equal payments, the first on the first day of August next ensuing and the remaining half in the year 1760, Campbell having given a bond for the due performance of his contract. At the same session the contract to build the "Goal and stocks for this county" was confirmed to "Daniel French Gent" for 83 pounds current money to be paid on or before the 20th day of August then next; and it is noted that Campbell and French were the lowest bidders.

The building operations duly progressed. At the court held on the 15th November, 1759, a levy was laid in tobacco for the compensation of county officers and of 29,200 pounds of tobacco for the balance due Campbell, referred to as being "late sheriff" and succeeded by "Nicholas Minor Gt."

Upon completion of the building in 1761 the cautious Captain Minor felt assurance to execute his deed to the county. On the 17th day of June in that year he conveyed to "Francis Lightfoot Lee Gentleman the first Justice named and nominated in the Commission of the Peace for the said County of Loudoun for and in behalf of him the said Francis Lightfoot Lee and the rest of the Justices in the said Commission named and their and his successors" for the nominal consideration of five shillings, "Current Money of Virginia, the two Lots of Land situate lying and being in the Town of Leesburg in the County and Colony aforesaid being the same whereon the Courthouse and Prison now stand laid off and surveyed by John Hough to contain each Lot half an Acre and numbered twenty seven and twenty eight." There were some formal rites attending the transfer of the land and the ancient "livery of seizin" ceremony was duly enacted. Then, following the signature of Minor and his witnesses to the deed:

"Memorandum that on the Eleventh Day of June Anno Domini one Thousand seven hundred and sixty one full peaceable and Quiet possession of the within mentioned premises was given by Nicholas Minor Gent to Francis Lightfoot Lee and the other Justices within named by delivery to him and them Turf and Twig on the said[111] premises in the presence of the underwritten Persons then Present."[83]

"Ordered that Nicholas Minor Gen't. and John Moss Junr. Agree with Workmen to clear away the Bricks and Dirt about the Courthouse and likewise for building a Necessary House and Posting and Railing in the Courthouse Lott and bring in their Account at the Laying of the next Levy."[84]

And from that day to this the Loudoun courthouse, in its various and successive reconstructions, has always stood on these lots of Captain Nicholas Minor, thus granted by him to the county for that purpose. In the process of time the prison, the stocks and the "Necessary House" have been removed.

In September, 1758, the Assembly passed an act "erecting" Leesburg as a town, in the same measure "erecting" Stephensburg and enlarging Winchester, which act reads, in part, as follows:

"An Act for erecting a town on the land of Lewis Stephens, in the county of Frederick: For enlarging the town of Winchester, and for erecting a town on the land of Nicholas Minor, in the county of Loudoun....

"III And whereas Nicholas Minor of the county of Loudoun, gentleman, hath laid off sixty acres of his land, adjoining to the court-house of the said county into lots, with proper streets for a town, many of which lots are sold, and improvements made thereon, and the inhabitants of the said county have petitioned this general assembly that the same may be erected into a town, Be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the land so laid off into lots and streets, for a town, by the said Nicholas Minor, be and the same is hereby erected and established a town, and shall be called by the name of Leesburg; and that the free holders and inhabitants thereof shall for ever hereafter enjoy the same privileges which the inhabitants of other towns, erected by act of Assembly, now enjoy.

"IV And whereas it is expedient that trustees should be appointed to regulate the buildings in the said towns of Stephensburg,[112] Winchester and Leesburg: Be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, ... And that the honorable Philip Ludwell Lee, esquire, Thomas Mason, esquire, Francis Lightfoot Lee, James Hamilton, Nicholas Minor, Josias Clapham, Aeneas Campbell, John Hugh, Francis Hague, and William West, gentlemen, be constituted and appointed trustees for the said town of Leesburg; and that they, or any five or more of them, are hereby authorized and empowered, from time to time, and all times hereafter, to settle and establish such rules and orders for the more regular and orderly building of the houses in the said town of Leesburg, as to them shall seem best and most convenient. And in the case of death or removal, or other legal disability of any one or more of the trustees above mentioned, it shall and may be lawful for the surviving or remaining trustees of the said towns of Stephensburg, Winchester, and Leesburg, respectively, from time to time, to elect and choose so many other persons in the room of those so dead, removed or disabled, as shall make up the number of ten; which trustees, so chosen, shall by all intents and purposes be vested with the same power as any other in this Act particularly named."[85]

Of the members of the Lee family participating in the early affairs of the town and county or owning land in Loudoun, it is generally held that the new town was named in honour of Francis Lightfoot Lee, the first county lieutenant. Thus the Lees are appropriately and locally commemorated, though their river still remains Goose Creek and the county of their large holdings goes by another and less congruous name.

Now it must be remembered that in this year of 1758 which marked the formal recognition and naming of Leesburg, the French and Indian menace was a very real and terrible anxiety in the minds of the Loudoun settlers and had been responsible for the erection of the small frontier fort at this point which has been mentioned. The local tradition that the little town, when first built, was surrounded by a timber stockade seems not only plausible but highly probable.[113][86] It was a well established custom of the English Colonists on the Indian frontier, north and south, to protect their outlying villages in that manner. Leesburg people always insist that the noticeable crowding together of houses in the older part of the town and the pronounced local custom of building immediately on the street line is a survival of this very early need of concentration for protection.

Where the two main roads, to which the town owes its existence, passed through its future site, they followed the old Virginia custom in being decidedly indefinite in their bounds; and their condition was further complicated by the ground at this point being marshy and fed by numerous springs. Therefore even before Leesburg was laid out or Loudoun organized, the people living in the neighborhood had petitioned the Fairfax Court for the construction of a highway at that point in such manner as would be most convenient for the travel from Noland's Ferry to the Carolinas. When Loudoun was organized the petition was certified to the court of the new county which, in its November term of 1757, ordered that the roads leading from Alexandria to Winchester and from Noland's Ferry to the Carolinas be opened to go through that neighbourhood "in the most convenient manner;" and James Hamilton, John Moss and Thomas Sorrell were ordered "to view the most convenient way for the same and make report to the Court." These viewers proceeded to so efficiently fulfill their duties that when they eventually reported to the court, on the 12th April, 1758, that they had "viewed the most convenient way for the Roads to pass through the Town and find them convenient and good with proper clearing,"[87] a corduroy road had been constructed through the marshy ground and Hough was thus able to have his King Street in definite bounds when he mapped his survey for Minor.

CHAPTER X

ADOLESCENCE

Our upper country, at last, has graduated from being classified as merely part of the backwoods of Lord Fairfax's Northern Neck and is now enrolled in the rapidly growing roster of colonial Virginia's counties. Unfortunately the conferring of that dignity did not alter the social problems of the frontier nor change, to any great degree, the turbulence and heterogeneous character of its population. The Irish element, particularly, appears to have been pugnacious and lawless, if one may judge from the frequency of proceedings before the Court for "battery" wherein defendants carry distinctly Hibernian names. There was no dearth of business, civil or criminal, awaiting the court's sessions.

Those of the poorer class, however, were not alone in taking the law into their own hands. Cameron Parish, as heretofore appears, was set up in 1748. Whether its vestry was more arbitrary and tenacious of office or merely less diplomatic than was the rule elsewhere is not clear; but that there developed great dissatisfaction with its activities the records show. The Parish vestry, it will be remembered, exercised many powers of civil government. Originally the vestry of twelve gentlemen and their successors were chosen by vote of the parishioners; but gradually the practice developed in existing vestries, upon the death or resignation of a member, for the survivors themselves arbitrarily to appoint his successor. There never was unanimity of religious belief in Cameron the Parish nor in Loudoun the county. From the very beginning, as we have seen, the land was peopled by men and women of definitely divergent religious views—the Churchmen from Tidewater with some Baptists and Presbyterians, a large number of Quakers from Pennsylvania, Germans from overseas and no small number whose religious convictions, if existent, were of nebulous tenuity. Had the vestries stood annually for election the populace might have felt more closely represented; but with their membership exclusively taken from the landowning class which had migrated from the lower country, the Quakers, the Scotch-Irish,[115] the Germans accepted a somewhat arbitrary rule less willingly than were they all churchmen and meeting together in common worship. The friction was not confined to Cameron. Similar troubles had developed elsewhere and petitions had been sent to Williamsburg for relief. In 1759 the Legislature decided to act. "Whereas" reads the preamble to Chapter XXI of the Laws of 1758-59

"it has been represented to this present General Assembly, that the Vestries of the parish of Antrim, in the County of Halifax; of the parish of Cameron in the County of Loudoun; of the parish of Bath, in the County of Dinwiddie; and of the parish of Saint-Patrick, in the County of Prince Edward, have been guilty of arbitrary and illegal practices to the great oppression of the inhabitants of said parishes ... and the inhabitants of said parishes have respectively petitioned this Assembly that the said vestries may be dissolved;"[88]

the Legislature thereupon dissolved the vestries named, their future acts were "declared utterly void to all intents and purposes whatsoever" and the freeholders and housekeepers of the respective parishes authorized to meet, on notice, and "elect twelve of the most able & discreet persons of the said parishes respectively to be vestrymen of the same." So far was the Legislature willing to go; but the orthodox rulers of Virginia did not for a moment propose to turn over control of the vestries in the dissatisfied parishes to a dissenting element; there was a further provision that should any vestrymen dissent from the communion of the Church of England and join "themselves to a dissenting congregation, and yet continue to act as vestrymen" they should be displaced.

During the ensuing ten years Loudoun's population grew rapidly and a parish extending from Difficult Run to the Blue Ridge covered so much territory that it made it difficult for a vestry, chosen from different parts of the parish, to assemble frequently for business. The project of dividing Cameron was the subject of a petition to the Legislature in 1769 but because of opposition and disagreement[116] the division was not made until June, 1770, when an act was passed creating a new parish beyond Goose Creek and running to the Blue Ridge.[89] It was given the name of Shelburne in compliment to the British statesman William Petty-FitzMaurice, Lord Shelburne.

This contemplated division of Cameron had repercussions in the relations between that parish and its mother parish Truro. The new Shelburne would take from Cameron many of its tithables or taxpayers and suggested intensive study of its remaining economic resources. In November, 1766, or twenty-eight years after the creation of Cameron, the Legislature passed an act empowering Truro's vestry to sell its parish Glebe and church plate and divide the proceeds between Truro and Cameron; while three years later, in the act creating Shelburne, it was provided that as the Cameron Glebe was then located inconveniently, the latter's vestry was authorized to sell it and use the proceeds "toward purchasing a more convenient glebe, and erecting buildings thereon, for the use and benefit of the minister of the said parish of Cameron, for the time being, forever."[90]

The parish well may continue to take satisfaction in having been named worthily. Shelburne came of an historical and noble family, being a direct descendant of the very ancient Lords of Kerry. Born in Dublin on the 20th May, 1737, his childhood is said to have been "spent in the remotest parts of the south of Ireland and according to his own account when he entered Christ Church, Oxford in 1755 he had both everything to learn and everything to unlearn." Perhaps his friendship and conciliatory attitude always shewn toward the American Colonies arose from his naturally amiable and considerate disposition, perhaps from his participation under Wolfe in campaigns against the French. However that may be, he was well-liked and trusted in Virginia. He succeeded his father as Earl of Shelburne in 1761. During the critical years of 1766 and 1767 he was serving, under Pitt, as Secretary of State and sought, as a friend of the Colonies, to avoid the crisis which was surely developing. Unfortunately[117] his efforts toward conciliation were blocked by others of the ministry and the King and in 1768 Shelburne was dismissed. In 1782 he reassumed office under Lord Rockingham, with the express understanding that the independence of the American Colonies should be recognized; an attitude requiring courage and strength to maintain. When Rockingham died, Shelburne succeeded him as Premier but through an alliance of Fox with Shelburne's old enemy North, he was forced to resign that position in 1783. A year later, when Pitt returned to power, he caused Shelburne to be created first Marquis of Landsdowne with which his public career ended. He was succeeded in his titles and estates, upon his death on the 7th May, 1805, by his eldest son.[91]

More fortunate in its fate than the early vestry books of Cameron, which have been destroyed or lost, the first vestry book of Shelburne, covering the period from 1771 to 1805, has been preserved and after being for many years in the library of the Episcopal Theological Seminary at Alexandria was sent to the State Library in Richmond. A photostatic copy has been made and is held in Loudoun.[92]

By way of contrast to the first vestry books of Virginia's older parishes, the earliest entries in that of Shelburne do not yield a great amount of interesting material. Its pages are largely filled with details of the levy of taxes and there is a protracted quarrel over the sites to be chosen for new church buildings which, in the event, prevented action until the Revolution and its aftermath deprived the Vestries of much of their authority. A few entries in the Vestry book have been abstracted:

"30th November 1772 Ordered that the Church Wardens for the Present Year do provide Benches to accomodate the persons who come to attend Divine Service at the Court House in Leesburg."

And then, to shew what a Church the Parish might have had but did not, there is this entry on the 30th December 1774. (Page 30) "Ordered that there be a Church built at or near the place where the Chapple now stands at Stephen Rozels and that it be[118] 50 feet long & 40 feet broad in the clear. To be built either of brick or stone. To be of Sufficient Pitch for two rows of Windows, if built of brick the wall to be 2¹/₂ brick thick if built of stone the walls to be 2 feet thick; the Pews & all the Carpenter work to be of pine plank (framing excepted) The Base to be of Stone 2¹/₂ feet thick & to be finished off in such manner as the person appointed shall direct."

From the 10th day of June, 1776, no meeting of the vestry is recorded until the 1st day of April 1779.

At the meeting of the 4th November, 1795, Mr. Jones, the minister was ordered to preach "one Sunday at the Church at Rozels & the rest at Leesburg."

Thus the county was divided into two parishes. A little later Cameron secured the services, as Parson, of a member of another well-known family of the Northern Neck when, in 1771, the Rev. Spence Grayson returned from his theological studies and ordination in England and assumed that position. He was the son of Benjamin Grayson and Susan Monroe and had inherited from his father his home, Belle Air, in Prince William County which he left to go to England to enter the church. He married Mary Elizabeth Wagener, sister to Colonel Peter Wagener (clerk of Fairfax County and subsequently an officer in the Revolution) and became one of the original trustees in 1788 of the town of Carrborough on the south side of the mouth of Quantico Creek, where now are situated the Marine Corps Barracks. His nephew was the well-known Colonel William Grayson who, after serving with distinction in the Revolution, became one of the original two senators from Virginia.

But Shelburne was not to be cast in the shade in this matter of Parsons. In 1771 there was inducted there as minister the man who, of her long line of clergy, has left in Church, State, and Nation the most prominent name of all. The Rev. Dr. David Griffith had been born in the city of New York in 1742. Like the Rev. Charles Green, early minister of Truro, Dr. Griffith first became a physician, taking his medical degree in London and then returning to New York and beginning his practice as a physician there in 1763. Determining to[119] enter the church ministry, he returned to England and was ordained in London by Bishop Terrick on the 19th August, 1770. Again he returned to America and worked as a missionary in New Jersey, whence he came to take charge of Shelburne Parish in 1771. When the Revolution came on, he, in 1776, became Chaplain of the 3rd Virginia Regiment and, in December of that year, he "was acting as a surgeon in the Continental Army in Philadelphia." Long a close and confidential friend of George Washington, he became the Rector of Christ Church, Alexandria, in 1780, in which position he continued until his death. He was a leader in building up the church in Virginia from its depressed condition after the Revolution, was a member of its first convention in Richmond in 1785 and was elected first Bishop of Virginia at the second annual convention of the Diocese in May, 1786. Unfortunately there were no funds available to pay his expenses to England and thus he was never formally consecrated. He died at the house of Bishop White in Philadelphia, while attending a church convention there, in 1789. He has been described as "large and tall in person but firm in manner. Without perhaps being brilliant, he was an able man of sound judgment and consecrated life, who had the esteem and affection as well as the confidence of his contemporaries. His memory ought to be held by us in highest honour."[93]

In those days Loudoun shared, with other of Virginia's frontier counties, a pest of numerous wolves which indeed penetrated into the older counties as well. There was a broad demand that the bounty for killing the animals be increased and in 1765 the Assembly passed an act authorizing Loudoun and six other counties to pay larger bounties, providing that a person killing a wolf within their respective boundaries "shall have an additional reward of fifty pounds of neat tobacco for every young wolf not exceeding the age of six months, and for every wolf above that age one hundred pounds of neat tobacco, to be levied and paid in the respective counties where[120] the service shall be performed."[94] The act was to continue in force, however, only three years.

Five years later the hunting activities of Leesburg, at least, took on a more domestic hue. The inhabitants of the little town were busy in building up the reputation of a famous Virginia delicacy but apparently were rather overdoing it. "It is represented" reads an act of 1772 "that a great number of hogs are raised and suffered to go at large in the town of Leesburg, in the county of Loudoun to the great prejudice of the inhabitants thereof;" so the act forbade owners from allowing such liberties to their porkers and permitted any person to "kill and destroy such swine so running at large."[95]

That Francis Aubrey established the first ferry from Loudoun's shore across the Potomac prior to 1741 has been noted in Chapter IV. It was at the Point of Rocks and was inherited by Thomas Aubrey, son of its founder, who obtained a license for its operation in 1769. By 1775 the travel was very light at that point and complaint was made of inadequate equipment. In 1834 it, with the surrounding land on the Loudoun side, was in the possession of Rebecca Johnson and in 1837 in that of Margaret Graham. The construction of the Point of Rocks bridge by the Potomac Bridge Company in 1847 ended its usefulness.

A second ferry, also across the Potomac and heretofore recorded, became far more famous than that of the Aubreys. When Philip Noland acquired land on that river where travel over the old Carolina Road had, from time immemorial, crossed it, he had the most valuable and frequented ferry-site in the neighborhood. He had sought, but unsuccessfully, a ferry license as early as 1748; in 1756, with or without a license, he was operating his ferry. Its operation was eventually authorized by the Legislature in 1778 to the land of Arthur Nelson in the State of Maryland. No other ferry from Loudoun's shores acquired the fame that did Noland's. At the height of its activities the travel at that point is said to have supported a country store, a blacksmith's shop, a wagon shop, a tailor[121] and a shoemaker. The coming of the railroads and the construction of the Point of Rocks Bridge together were responsible for its ultimate abandonment. We have a suggestive glimpse of conditions there. In May, 1780, the Moravian emissary John Frederick Reichel, in the course of his ministrations to those of his faith in America, undertook a journey from Bethlehem in Pennsylvania down the Carolina Road to the present Winston-Salem in North Carolina. One of his companions kept a journal from which we learn that upon successfully crossing into Virginia at Noland's Ferry, Bishop Reichel and his company "made camp near Mr. Th. Noland's house close to the road which turns to the right from the Foart road towards Noland's Ferry which crosses the Patomoak two miles from here. So far our journey had been very pleasant. Now, however, the Virginia air brought storms." While the weary travelers were resting that night from their journey, some of Noland's negroes left their "Quarters" and proceeded to lay their hands on the strangers' equipment. The diarist on the next day indignantly records the following "Note. Mr. Th. Noland and his father and father in law have 200 negroes in this neighbourhood on both sides of the Potomoack and this neighbourhood is far-famed for robbery and theft." On their return the travellers found that Mr. Noland had busied himself in recapturing much of the loot and duly returned the articles to their rightful owners.[96]

Between Noland and Josias Clapham there was a controversy for many years over which of the two should control the very profitable ferry business over the nearby stretches of the Potomac. Both had powerful associations and friends and both were, through their own activities and characters, outstanding figures in the Loudoun of their day. Noland as the son-in-law of the most prominent of Loudoun's earliest settlers, Francis Aubrey, and through his wife in possession of part of Aubrey's great land-grants, could well have entertained a conviction that he was Aubrey's representative and as such entitled to especial consideration as well as for his own accomplishments; while, on the other hand, Clapham's inherited friendship[122] with Lord Fairfax and his own recent military services as a lieutenant in the troublous times following Braddock's defeat and death, his early and continued ownership of extensive tracts of land, his sound personal qualities and the high esteem in which he was held by his neighbours, made him a formidable opponent and rival. He successfully fought Noland's application to the Legislature for a ferry license in 1756 and in 1757 obtained one himself for the operation of a ferry below that of Noland, "from the lands of Josias Clapham, in the County of Fairfax, over Potowmack river, to the land on either side of Monochisey creek, in the province of Maryland; the price for a man four pence & for a horse the same."[97] Though this license was afterwards suspended, Clapham appears to have operated his ferry until 1778 when the Legislature ordered it discontinued as inconvenient. As Clapham at that time was himself a member of that body, it is probable that the old rivalry between the neighbours had ended.

We learn something of yet another ferry from this same act of the Legislature passed in the war year of 1778. Therein it was also provided "that publick ferries be constantly kept at the following places and the rates for passing the same be as follows, that is to say: From the land of the earl of Tankerville, in the County of Loudoun (at present in the tenure of Christian Shimmer) across Potowmack river to the opposite shore in the state of Maryland, the price for a man eight pence, and for a horse the same: ..." The act authorized Noland to collect the same tolls at his ferry, thus permitting the doubling of the ferry charges by the act of 1757.[98]

CHAPTER XI

REVOLUTION

When the American Colonies joined issue with Great Britain in the controversy which was to result in American independence, Loudoun's population, beginning with a thin trickle of adventurers, had been growing for over fifty years, during which time, save for the short period before and after Braddock's defeat, her sure but steady development and increase of people had received no serious reversal. The exact number of her inhabitants in 1775 is unknown; but fifteen years later she was credited with 14,747 whites and 4,030 slaves or a total of 18,777 individuals. One writer goes so far as to assert that the county was one of the most densely populated in the Colony at that period.[99] Toward the close of the conflict, in 1780 and 1781, her militia numbered no less than 1746 men, which is claimed by Head to have been "far in excess of that reported by any other Virginia County." When it is remembered that her present population does not greatly exceed 20,000 inhabitants and that, in the years which have intervened, the towns have substantially increased in number and size, it is probable that the country districts were quite as populous in 1775 as they are today.

With her early diversity of population, it might well be expected that the county's inhabitants would be divided in their attitude as to the wisdom of war with England. There seems, however, to have been practically a solid front, save for the Quakers who, because of their oppugnance to all war, opposed the Revolution in Loudoun as elsewhere and suffered bitterly in consequence as later will be related.

As it was, Loudoun lost no time in placing herself on record, as the following amply demonstrates:

"At a meeting of the Freeholders and other inhabitants of the County of Loudoun, in the Colony of Virginia, held at the Courthouse in Leesburg, the 14th June 1774—F. Peyton, Esq., in the chair—to consider the most effective method to preserve the rights[124] and liberties of N. America, and relieve our brethren of Boston, suffering under the most oppressive and tyranical Act of the British Parliament, made in the 14th year of his present Majesty's reign, whereby their Harber is blocked up, their commerce totally obstructed, their property rendered useless

"Resolved, That we will always cheerfully submit to such prerogatives as his Majesty has a right, by law, to exercise, as Sovereign of the British Dominions, and to no others.

"Resolved, That it is beneath the dignity of freemen to submit to any tax not imposed on them in the usual manner, by representatives of their own choosing.

"Resolved, That the Act of the British Parliament above mentioned, is utterly repugnant to the fundamental laws of justice, in punishing persons without even the form of a trial; but a despotic exertion of unconstitutional power designedly calculated to enslave a free and loyal people.

"Resolved, That the enforcing the execution of the said Act of Parliament by a military power, must have a necessary tendency to raise a civil war, and that we will, with our lives and fortunes, assist our suffering brethren of Boston, and every part of North America that may fall under the immediate hand of oppression, until a release of all our grievances shall be procurred; and our common liberties established on a permanent foundation.

"Resolved, That the East India Company, by exporting their tea from England to America, whilst subject to a tax imposed thereon by the British Parliament, have evidently designed to fix on the Americans those chains forged for them by a venal ministry, and have thereby rendered themselves odious and detestable throughout all America. It is, therefore, the unanimous opinion of this meeting not to purchase any tea or other East India commodity whatever, imported after the first of this Month.

"Resolved, That we will have no Commercial intercourse with Great Britain until the above mentioned Act of Parliament shall be totally repealed, and the right of regulating the internal policy of[125] N. America by a British Parliament shall be absolutely and positively given up.

"Resolved, That Thompson Mason and Francis Peyton, Esqs., be appointed to represent the County at a general meeting to be held at Williamsburg on the 1st day of August next, to take the sense of this Colony on the subject of the preceeding resolves, and that they, together with Leven Powell, William Ellzey, John Thornton, George Johnston and Samuel Levi, or any three of them, be a committee to correspond with the several Committees appointed for this purpose

The names of the following men, composing the Committee for Loudoun, are taken from the record of its meeting on the 26th May, 1775:

When war began, the gentlemen justices of the county's court recommended certain of her men to the governor from time to time as worthy of commissions in the military forces being raised by the Colony. Many an old and familiar Loudoun name appears on the list and for the interest of their descendants and relatives it is here appended as abstracted from the county records by James W. Head in his very useful History of Loudoun:[101]

"March 1778: James Whaley Jr., second lieutenant; William Carnan, ensign; Daniel Lewis, second lieutenant; Josiah Miles and Thomas King, lieutenants; Hugh Douglass, ensign; Isaac Vandevanter, lieutenant; John Dodd, ensign.

"May 1778. George Summers and Charles G. Eskridge, colonels; William McClellan, Robert McClain and John Henry, captains; Samuel Cox, Major; Frans Russell, James Beavers, Scarlet Burkley, Moses Thomas, Henry Farnsworth, John Russell, Gustavus Elgin, John Miller, Samuel Butcher, Joshua Botts, John Williams, George Tyler, Nathaniel Adams and George Mason, lieutenants; Isaac Grant, John Thatcher, William Elliott, Richard Shore, and Peter Benham, ensigns.

[127]"August, 1778 Thomas Marks, William Robison, Joseph Butler and John Linton, lieutenants; Joseph Wildman and George Asbury, ensigns.

"June, 1780 Wethers Smith and William Debell, second lieutenants, Francis Adams and Joel White, ensigns.

"October, 1780. John Spitzfathem, first lieutenant; Thomas Thomas and Matthew Rust, second lieutenants; Nicholas Minor Jr., David Hopkins, William McGeath and Samuel Oliphant ensigns; Charles Bennett, captain.

"November, 1780. James Coleman, Esq., Colonel, George West, lieutenant-colonel; James McLlaney, Major.

"February, 1781. Simon Triplett, Colonel; John Alexander, lieutenant-colonel; Jacob Reed, Major; John Linton, captain; William Debell and Joel White, lieutenants; Thomas Minor, ensign; Thomas Shores, captain; John Tayler and Thomas Beatty, lieutenants; John McClain, ensign.

"March 1781. John McGeath, captain; Ignatius Burns, captain; Hugh Douglass, first lieutenant; John Cornelison, second lieutenant; Joseph Butler and Conn Oneale, lieutenants; John Jones, Jr., ensign; William Tayler, Major first battalion; James Coleman, Colonel; George West, lieutenant-colonel; Josiah Maffett, captain; John[128] Binns, first lieutenant; Charles Binns, Jr., second lieutenant and Joseph Hough, ensign.

"April 1781. Samson Trammell, captain; Spence Wigginton and Smith King, lieutenants.

"May 1781. Thomas Respass, Esq., Major; Hugh Douglass, Gent. captain; Thomas King, lieutenant; William T. Mason, ensign; Samuel Noland, captain; Abraham Dehaven and Enock Thomas, lieutenants; Isaac Dehaven and Thomas Vince, ensigns; James McLlaney, captain; Thomas Kennan, captain; John Bagley, first lieutenant.

"June 1781. Enoch Furr and George Rust, lieutenants; Withers Berry and William Hutchison (son of Benjamin), ensign.

"March 1782. James McLlaney, captain; George West, colonel, Thomas Respass, lieutenant-colonel.

"July 1782. Samuel Noland, Major; James Lewin Gibbs, second lieutenant and Giles Turley, ensign.

"August 1782. Enoch Thomas, captain; Samuel Smith, lieutenant; Matthias Smitley, first lieutenant; Charles Tyler and David Beaty, ensigns.

"December 1782. Thomas King, captain; William Mason, first lieutenant and Silas Gilbert, ensign."

By a stroke of good fortune, there has been brought to light and published in recent years a journal kept by one Nicholas Cresswell, a young Englishman of gentle birth who, in 1774, at the age of 24 years obeyed a keen impulse to emigrate to Virginia with the expectation of buying a plantation and becoming a Virginia farmer.[102] His home in England was the estate of his father, known as Crowden-le-Booth, in the parish of Edale in the Peak of Derbyshire. The[129] father seems to have been a somewhat stern disciplinarian, against the rigidity of whose rule and unhappy home conditions young Cresswell fretted; and that and an ambition to make his own way in the world, coupled with an appetite for adventure common to his age and race, induced Nicholas to his course. After many difficulties, he sailed from England in the ship Molly on the 9th of April, 1774, and thus began a series of adventures, his excellent record of which has been characterized as "a valuable addition to Revolutionary Americana" and, it may be added, is nothing less than treasure trove to the student of Loudoun's past. In the course of his ensuing experiences he met, among a multitude of others, Jefferson, Lord Howe, Patrick Henry, Francis Lightfoot Lee; was upon occasion Washington's guest at Mount Vernon and paints and proves Thomson Mason to have been one of the kindliest and most hospitable of men. His wanderings took him through many parts of Virginia and particularly Leesburg and its neighborhood, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York; on a voyage to Barbados to recoup his health and on an expedition as a viewer and surveyor of new lands, down the Ohio River into Indiana country, in an unsuccessful effort to recoup his fortune. An educated young Englishman, loyal to his King and country, arriving in the Colonies as the storm of the Revolution was about to break, he soon was suspected of being an English spy, was bullied and persecuted by some, befriended by others and, withal, records his experiences in a narrative of such fascination that one reads it from end to end with unabated interest. Of the Leesburg and Loudoun of the period he gives the best contemporary, if not always complimentary, account known to the present writer. Through the courtesy of the Dial Press, the publishers of his Journal in the United States, the following abstract of Loudoun material is permitted:

Cresswell first passed through Loudoun in November, 1774, in the course of a journey to the Valley. He arrived in Leesburg on Sunday the 27th and records:

"The land begins to grow better. A Gravelly soil and produces good Wheat, but the roads are very bad, cut to pieces with the wagons,[130] number of them we met today. Their method of mending the roads is with poles about 10 foot long laid across the road close together; they stick fast in the mud and make an excellent causeway. Very thinly peopled along the road, almost all Woods. Only one public House between this place and Alexandria."

On the next day he inspected Leesburg. "Viewing the town. It is regularly laid off in squares, but very indifferently built and few inhabitants and little trade, tho' very advantageously situated, for it is at the conjunction of the great Roads from the North part of the Continent to the South and the East and the West. Lodged at Mr. Moffit's, Mr. Kirk's partner in a store which he has here."

On the following Sunday, "Went to a Methodist meeting. This Sect is scattered in every place and have got considerable footing here, owing to the great negligence of the Church Parsons."

The next day he continued his journey to the West, returning to Leesburg on the 14th December, 1774. On the following day, being Sunday, he simply notes "but no prayers." On Monday, "Court day. A great number of litigious suits. The people seem to be fond of Law. Nothing uncommon for them to bring suit against a person for a Book debt and trade with him on an open account at the same time. To be arrested for debt is no scandal here." And on the next day he "Saw the Independence Company exercise. A ragged crew." In January he amuses himself "with shooting wild Geese and Ducks. Here is incredible numbers in the River likewise Swans. It is said they come from the Lakes."

Again on his way to the West, this time to the Indian country, he arrived in Leesburg on Sunday the 26th March, 1775. On the following Wednesday he "went to look at a silver mine. Saw some appearance of metal but don't know what it is." On the 31st: "At Leesburg waiting for my gun and goods coming from Alexandria. The Peach Orchards are in full blossom and make a beautiful appearance." On the following Sunday, the 2nd April, he notes "But no Parson. It is a shame to suffer these people to neglect their duty in the manner they do."

After his journey in the "Illinois Country" we find him again in[131] Leesburg in the employment of one Kirk, a merchant of Alexandria who, son of a blacksmith in Cresswell's home parish, had gone to Virginia and prospered there. On Sunday, the 19th November, 1775, Nicholas records that he "went to Church or Courthouse which you please in the forenoon" thus further confirming that the established church services were, at that time, held in the courthouse at Leesburg. Cresswell meets and is much in the company of George Johnston, Captain McCabe, George Ancram, and Captain Douglas. As a sidelight on Leesburg's evening diversions of the period, he writes under date of the 28th November that he "dined at Captn. McCabe's in Company with Captn. Douglas and Cavan. Spent the evening at the store in company with Captn. McCabe and Captn. Speake and all of us got drunk."

On the 4th December he made a short visit to "Frederick Town in Maryland," and, both going and some days later on his return, dined at Noland's Ferry, suggesting some accommodation for travellers there. On Sunday the 10th December, he "went to Church, spent the evening at Mr. Johnson's with the Rev. Mr. David Griffiths and several gentlemen."

He was a guest at "Garalland, seat of Captn. William Douglas. A great deal of agreeable Company and very merry." On the next day there was "Dancing and playing at Cards. In the evening several of the company went in quest of a poor Englishman, who they supposed had made songs on the Committee, but did not find him." This week was one of celebration; on the following Friday, (5th January, 1776) "This being my birthday, invited Captn. McCabe, H. Neilson, W. Johnston, Matthews, Booker and my particular Friend P. Cavan to spend the evening with me. We have kept it up all night and I am at this time very merry." On Saturday: "Spent the evening at Mr. Johnston's with our last night's company. He is going to camp. All of us got most feloniously drunk. Captn. McCabe, Hugh Neilson and I kept it up all night." On Sunday: "went to bed about two o'clock in the afternoon, stupidly drunk. Not been in bed or asleep for two nights."

[132]Virginia was heading toward independence, with war if need be. Popular sentiment is shown by such entries as "Nothing but Independence will go down. The Devil is in the people." "All in confusion. The Committee met to choose Officers for the new Company that are to be raised. They are 21 in number, the first men in the County and had two bowls of toddy," (he carefully explains elsewhere that "toddy" means punch) "but could not find cash to pay for it." On the 12th February, "Court day. Great Confusion, no business done. The populace deters the Magistrates and they in turn are courting the rebels' favour. Enlisting men for the Rebel Army upon credit. Their paper money is not yet arrived from the Mine." On the 22nd March he "went to see the general musters of the Militia in town, about 700 men but few arms." On Sunday the 17th May he says: "This day is appointed by the Great Sanhedrim to be kept an Holy Fast throughout the continent, but we have no prayers in Leesburg. The Parson (Rev. David Griffiths) is gone into the Army."

He has this to say about a Quaker meeting in February, probably at Waterford, to which he went with his friends Cavan and Thomas Matthews. "This is one of the most comfortable places of worship I was ever in, they had two large fires and a Dutch stove. After a long silence and many groans a Man got up and gave us a short Lecture with great deliberation. Dined at Mr. Jos. Janney's one of the Friends."

It was not until the 24th April, 1776, that Thomson Mason, who was to prove so consistently a friend to him, is introduced, when Cresswell notes that he was a dinner guest at his home—presumably Raspberry Plain. By that time Cresswell had made a host of acquaintances and friends. He enjoyed popularity with his new companions, frequently was entertained or was a host himself. To add to his scanty resources, he made lye, nitre and saltpetre on shares and his process and progress he records in detail. His work was interrupted by frequent illness, due doubtless to the heavy drinking indulged in by him and his associates.

[133]On the 9th July, 1776, he learns, to his dismay, of the Declaration of Independence.

From time to time he dined with Thomson Mason who on the 26th July "proffers to give me a letter of recommendation to the Governor Henry for liberty to go on board the Fleet in the Bay. I have no other choice to go home but this;" and on the next day, "a general muster of the Militia. Great confusion among them. Recruiting parties offer 10 Dollars advance and 40 S per month."

But Cresswell realized the increasing danger to him, loyal Briton that he was, of a continued stay in America. In August he determined to go to New York for he was convinced that he "must either escape that way or go to jail for Toryism." He did not tell Mr. Mason of his design to leave the county, but only that he contemplated a northern journey; and from him obtained a "letter to Messrs. Francis Lightfoot Lee, Thos. Stone, Thos. Jefferson and John Rogers Esq., all members of the Congress." On the 23rd August "in company with Mr. Alexander Cooper, a Storekeeper in town" he left Leesburg for the north.

He duly arrived in Philadelphia which greatly pleased him in its size and cleanliness.

He calls on Lee and Jefferson, presents his letters, is kindly received and through the latter obtains "a pass written by Mr. John Hancock, Pres. of the Congress." Thence to New York, where he sees the British Army and ships in the distance but cannot reach them and begins to feel that to do so would be a dishonourable return for Thomson Mason's kindness. So back again to Leesburg he journeys, bewailing his situation but to his credit determining "to rot in a Jail rather than take up Arms against my native country."

On the 10th October, 1776, the 6th Regiment of Virginians, encamped at Leesburg on their way to the North, are described as "a set of dirty, ragged people, badly clothed, badly disciplined and badly armed." Salt was selling there at "Forty shillings, Currency, per Bushel. This article usually sold for four shillings. If no salt comes in there will be an insurrection in the Colony." In Alexandria a few days later, he learns that the committee "will not permit me to depart[134] this Colony as they look upon me to be a Spy and that I must be obliged to give security or go to jail." Then to Leesburg again, which he seems to regard as his American home and on the 28th October sees a "General Muster of the County Militia in town, about 600 men appeared under-armed, with Tobacco sticks in general much rioting and confusion. Recruiting Officers for the Sleber Army offer Twelve Pounds bounty and 200 acres of land when the War is over, but get very few men." In spite of repeatedly admonishing himself in his journal to avoid political arguments he was unable to do so, particularly when in his cups, and so on the 28th November his criticism of the Revolution and its adherents caused him to be waited upon by three members of the Committee of Safety who obliged him to pledge himself not to leave the Colony for three months.

At this time there was an ordinary at Leesburg known as the Crooked Billet.[103] It was a favourite place for the heavy drinking parties in which Cresswell and his friends indulged. He records, after a night of debauchery, he had sent all his companions "to bed drunk and I am now going to bed myself at 9 in the morning as drunk as an honest man could wish." The next day the carouse continued. The Leesburg of the eighteenth century was as little noted for sobriety as were other parts of the English-speaking world.

After spending much of the winter of 1776-'7 in and around Leesburg and recording the great encouragement the Americans obtained from Washington's successes at Princeton and elsewhere, he, on the 1st March, 1777, "went with Captn. Douglas and Mr. Flemming Patterson to see Mr. Josiah Clapham. He is an Assembly Man, Colonel of the county and Justice of the Peace on the present establishment. He is an Englishman from Wakefield in Yorkshire, much in debt at home, and in course a violent Sleber here. Has made himself very popular by erecting a Manufactory of Guns, but it is poorly carried on. His wife is the most notable woman in the County for Housew'fery, but I should like her much better if she would keep a cleaner house. He has got a very good plantation, takes every[135] mean art to render himself popular amongst a set of ignorant Dutchmen that are settled in his neighbourhood. Dirty in person and principle."

Though much embarrassed by his poverty Cresswell refuses a commission as a captain of Engineers at $3 per day offered to him by Colonel Green and Colonel Grayson. He told them he "could not bear the thoughts of taking up arms against my native country" and they "were pleased to make me some genteel compliment about my steadiness and resolution." His despondency returns and Mason invites him to dinner and offers him "a letter of introduction and recommendations to the Governor of Virginia by his permission to go on board the man of war in the Bay." He resolves to accept the letter and make an attempt to return to England in April. The Rev. David Griffith returns to Leesburg and preaches "a political discourse." He speaks of meeting Mr. Griffith and his wife at Mr. Neilson's. Griffith, writes Cresswell "is a most violent Sleber. He is Doctor and Chaplain to one of their Regmt." On the 22nd March, 1777, he records "Great tumults and murmurings among the people caused by them pressing the young men into the Army. The people now begin to feel the effects of an Independent Government and groan under it, but cannot help themselves, as they are almost in general disarmed."

On the 6th April, 1777, he left Leesburg and eventually succeeded in getting to the British man-of-war Phoenix off the mouth of the Chesapeake. After another visit to New York he finally reached England in safety. In spite of all his tribulations and the very real dangers he incurred in his American sojourn, he records that "Virginia is the very finest country I ever was in"—no small concession.[104]

The people of Loudoun's German Settlement may have been "a set of ignorant Dutchmen" to the irritated Cresswell but they proved loyal and effective fighters in the American cause. They seem to have been whole-heartedly with their Tidewater and Scotch-Irish[136] neighbors in the controversy and are reputed to have largely joined Armand's Legion under Charles Trefin Armand, Marquis de la Rouaire (1751-1793) who, after service in the Garde de Corps in Paris, had volunteered in the American Army on the 10th May, 1777, under the name of Charles Armand, had been commissioned a colonel by the Congress, saw much service and was greatly beloved by his men, few of whom were able to speak English.

Cresswell is confirmed in his statement regarding Clapham's gun factory by the record of a session of the Committee of Safety of Virginia, held on the 27th March, 1776, at Williamsburg:

"Ordered that a letter be written to Colonel Clapham in answer to his of Feby 23rd and March 24th informing him that we have sent him £360 to pay for the rifles mentioned by Chro. Perfect, that the Comm'ee agree to take all the good musquets that shall be made by the 5 or 6 hands he mentions by the 1st December next, and desire him to contract for the 12 large rifles also mentioned."[105]

Two other men in Loudoun must again be cited for their activities in the cause of independence—one as a statesman, the other as a soldier. Thomson Mason, from his ownership of Raspberry Plain, was identified closely with the county although not a continuous resident there. We find him constantly devoting his time and abilities to the American cause. Even as early as 1774 he wrote

"You must draw your swords in a just cause, and rely upon that God, who assists the righteous, to support your endeavours to preserve the liberty he gave, and the love of which he hath implanted in your hearts as essential to your nature."

Less eloquent but more active was Leven Powell. He with Mason, in that same year of 1774, was urging his neighbors to resistance. In 1775 he received a commission as major in a battalion of Minute Men from Loudoun, in 1777 was made by General Washington a lieutenant colonel of the 16th Regiment of Virginia Continentals, spent the greater part of that year in raising and equipping his command and saw much active service until invalided home from the[137] vigours of the following terrible winter at Valley Forge. His impaired health forced him to resign his commission in the autumn of 1778.

By way of sharp contrast to the other people of Loudoun, the Quakers refused to aid or abet the Revolution in any way. Through their industry and frugality they had, by that time, acquired some influence in the County but when they refused to aid their fellow-Virginians in the great struggle, all that was changed. Non-resistance was a cardinal principle of their faith and come weal or woe they stuck to it. They refused to serve in the army. They refused to pay muster-fines. "Not even the scourge" writes Kercheval of the Quakers of the Valley, "would compel them to submit to discipline. The practice of coercion was therefore abandoned and the legislature enacted a law to levy a tax upon their property to hire substitutes to perform militia duty in their stead."[106] Refusing to pay these taxes their property was sold and many were reduced to great distress. Others, taking advantage of these tax sales, bought up their properties and profited largely by their shrewdness.

As the war continued, Virginia faced difficulties in raising her quota of Continental troops. We have read Cresswell's record of these troubles in Loudoun as early as October, 1776. In 1778 the Assembly passed an act recognizing as inadequate prior laws on the subject, calling for 2,216 men, rank and file, and offering for eighteen months enlistment $300; while to those who enlisted for three years, or the duration of the war, $400 was to be given "together with the continental bounty of land and shall be entitled to receive the pay and rations which are allowed to soldiers in the continental army from the day of their enlistment and shall be furnished annually, at the public expense with the following articles, a coat, waistcoat and breeches, two shirts, one hat, two pairs of stockings, one pair of shoes and a blanket...."[107] In the same year the Legislature was obliged to pass an act against "forestallers and engrossers"—in other words what we today call war profiteers,[138] authorizing the governor to seize grain and flour for the army in the hands of those gentry.[108]

The objection to enlistment seems to have been directed against the longer term rather than to military service itself. Also there was confusion and lack of that complete authority necessary in such a crisis. We find Colonel Josias Clapham writing to the Council of Virginia on the 11th September, 1778, asking to be permitted to send a company of volunteers, which had been raised in Loudoun, to the assistance of General McIntosh's Brigade, but his request was declined on the ground that the "Executive power" had no right to send volunteers to join any corps whatsoever.[109]

The lot of the Loyalist or "Tories" as they were popularly termed, was not a happy one. There was one James White who indiscreetly "spoke many disrespectful words of his Excellency G. Washington and that he was not fit to be the son of a Stewart dog." White appears to have been indicted in Loudoun as a Tory and thereupon to have fled the county. There is the suggestion that he was a man of some property and that to avoid its confiscation he later saw the error of his ways, returned to Loudoun, apologized to the court for his behavior, took the oath of allegiance to the new State of Virginia and so succeeded in having his indictment dismissed.[110]

At the other end of the social scale were the white convicts of which, as we have seen, Loudoun had long had her share or more. There has been preserved an advertisement of 1777 by Sam Love, a justice of the peace:

"Ran away from the subscriber, in Loudoun County, two convict servants, David Hinds, an Irishman, about 35 years of age, 5 feet, 6 or 8 inches high, pitted with small pox, hath a wart or pear on his chin, hath short, black, curled hair, had on when he went away a country cloth jacket and breeches, yarn stockings, country linen shirt, old shoes and felt hat almost new,—George Dorman, born in England, about 20 years of age, 5 feet, 6 or 7 inches hight, had on when he[139] went away nearly the same clothing as Hinds, they both had iron collars on when they went away, its expected they will change their clothing and have forged passes. Whoever brings the said servants home shall have Two Dollars reward for each if taken ten miles from home, and in proportion for a greater or less distance, as far as 50 miles, including what the law allows.

But negroes and convicts were not the only class in Loudoun deprived of liberty. Early in 1776 the unfortunate prisoners of war began to arrive. Of a number of "Highland Prisoners taken by Captain James and Richard Barren in the Ship Oxford," the following were sent to Loudoun by the Committee of Safety at its session on the 24th June 1776:

The next year a much larger contingent made its appearance. The Hessian prisoners taken at the Battle of Saratoga were divided into parties which were sent to different parts of the Colonies. A numerous band was sent to Noland's Ferry where a camp for them was established and, it is said, some of their number were employed in building the Noland mansion there, thus fixing the long disputed date of its construction. Briscoe Goodhart says that few of these prisoners were returned to Europe after the war but that, for the most part, they settled in Loudoun and in Frederick and Montgomery counties, Maryland, in all of which were many of German descent and that the former Hessian prisoners became useful and industrious citizens in their new homes.[112]

As the war drew to its close in 1781, there appears to have been a large accumulation of war supplies in Loudoun. Lafayette wrote to Washington on the 1st July of that year:

"There must be a great quantity of accoutrements in the country. By a letter from the Board of War, I find that 100 Saddles, 100 Swords, 100 pairs of pistols may be soon expected at Leesburg, supposing that the same number be got in the country...."[113]

On the 26th of the same month Colonel William Davis, in covering the situation in the Northern Neck, wrote

"At Noland's there are 920 muskets and 486 bayonets. Those added to the 275 at Fredericksburg are too many by 195...."[114]

And on the 9th August in the same year, Captain A. Bohannan wrote from Fauquier Court House to Colonel Wm. Davis:

"I have this moment returned from Leesburg—the stores that were there & at Noland's Ferry are now on their way to this place; it was with the greatest difficulty that I could procure waggons in the neighbourhood of Leesburg for the Transportation of them; in short I cou'd not have done it had I not promised to pay them when they arrived at this place & discharge them. It is useless to pretend to impress waggons in this part of the Country, as you will seldom see a waggon on any plantation but what wants either a wheel or Geer. the Inhabitants say they are willing to work for the public, provided that they cou'd get paid for their services. They are willing to take what the Q. M. Genl: allows, tho' it shu'd be less than they could get from private persons."

It was estimated that it would cost "Fifteen or Twenty Thousand Pounds" (presumably tobacco) to move the stores, and the writer "desires some pay for himself, being without a shilling and not having received any money for eighteen months."[115]

And now, a final glimpse of Loudoun and Leesburg in the Revolution, afforded in the diary of Captain John Davis of the Pennsylvania line who passed through the county with General Anthony[141] Wayne's Brigade on its way to Yorktown and victory; the entries to be quoted begin on the 31st day of May, 1781, when the command was on its way from "York Town" in Pennsylvania:

"Took up the line of march at sunrise, passed through Frederick Town, Maryland and reached Powtomack, which, in crossing in Squows, one unfortunately sunk, loaded with artillery & Q. M. stores and men in which our Sergeant & three men were drowned; encamped on the S. W. side of the river. Night being very wet, our baggage not crossed, Officers of the Reg. took Quarters in Col. Clapham's Negro Quarter, where we agreeably passed the night.

"June 1st. Continued on our ground till four o'clock in the afternoon, when we mov'd five miles on the way to Leesburg.

"3rd (Loudoun Co.) Took up the line of March at 10 o'clock, passed through Leesburg—the appearance of which I was much disappointed in; encamped at Goose Creek, 15 miles.

"4th. (Prince Wm. Co.) Marched from Goose Creek at six o'clock at which place left our baggage & sick, and proceeded through the low country. Roads bad in consequence of the rains; encamped at Red house 18 miles."

All writers of the period who describe the town agree that Leesburg, after twenty years or more of existence, was still a shabby little place, "of few and insignificant wooden houses" as one traveller records his impressions. The day of permanent buildings in the town had not yet arrived. Hardly an edifice standing in Leesburg today was then in existence.

CHAPTER XII

THE STORY OF JOHN CHAMPE

While the Powells and the Masons, the Lees, the Claphams, the Nolands and the Rusts, the Chinns, the Peytons, the Mercers, the Ellzeys and others of her natural leaders and large landowning families of the time, had abetted and supported, in one capacity or another, the Revolutionary cause, it was, in the end, the simple, homespun, backwoodsman class that bred Loudoun's most romantic figure in the Revolution. Sergeant Major John Champe of Lee's Partisan Legion, mighty of bone and sinew, stout-hearted, resourceful and of such boundless devotion and loyalty to his country and his commander-in-chief in its hour of travail that he consented to incur the scorn and hatred of his fellow-soldiers when along that hard path lay his duty, deserves to have his fidelity, his courage and his exploits commemorated at length in every story of his native county.

John Champe was born in what was soon to become Loudoun in the year 1752. Little or nothing is known of his boyhood. His family was too humble and his early life too obscure to have challenged the pen of his scattered neighbors. When the American Colonies revolted against the mother country, he at once enlisted in Virginia's forces and in 1780 was serving as a dragoon in Light Horse Harry Lee's cavalry Legion in which he had by sheer merit attained the rank of sergeant major and, through the esteem he had earned, was in line for promotion to a commission. The morale of the American Army had been profoundly shaken by Arnold's recent treason and escape; the courageous but unfortunate young British officer Andrè was a prisoner in Washington's hands as a result of his part in the affair and Washington was deeply troubled lest the treason which had corrupted Arnold had spread its vicious poison elsewhere among his soldiers. Henry Lee of Virginia, famous enough in his own right but also destined to be known as the father of General Robert E. Lee as well, was afterward, in the War of 1812, commissioned a major general; but then, as a cavalry major of twenty-three in command of an independent partisan corps of Dragoons,[143] had already achieved his magnificent capture of the British-held fort at Paulus Hook and for that and many another daring exploit enjoyed no small military distinction. At the time our story opens, Lee and his corps were with Washington along the Hudson River. Many years later he was to write his famous Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States,[116] an important source-book of American history. It is to this work that we are principally indebted for our knowledge of Champe's exploit and from it I shall quote largely the story, condensing but the less essential parts. Only thus can be taken the true measure of Champe's heroism, now too generally forgotten in Loudoun.

There had fallen into Washington's hands certain anonymous papers which appeared to involve other of his soldiers in treason, and particularly one of his generals.[117] He had sent for Lee and handed him the papers. Lee studied them carefully and when asked his counsel, said he thought they represented a contrivance of Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander-in-chief, to destroy confidence between Washington and his men and purposely had been permitted by the British to fall into Washington's hands. Washington rejoined that the idea was plausible and had already occurred to him; but the danger involved in the possible defection of one of his highest officers was so great that the truth must be ascertained at once.

"'I have sent for you'" Lee quotes Washington as saying, "'in the expectation that you have in your corps individuals capable and willing to undertake an indispensable, delicate and hazardous project. Whoever comes forward upon this occasion, will lay me under great obligations personally, and in behalf of the United States I will reward him amply. No time is to be lost: he must proceed if possible this night. My object is to probe to the bottom the afflicting intelligence contained in the papers you have just read; to seize Arnold, and by getting him, to save Andrè. They are all connected. While my emissary is engaged in preparing means for the seizure of Arnold, the guilt of others can be traced; and the timely delivery of Arnold[144] to me, will possibly put it into my power to restore the amiable and unfortunate Andrè to his friends. My instructions are ready, in which you will find my express orders that Arnold is not to be hurt; but that he be permitted to escape if to be prevented only by killing him, as his public punishment is the sole object in view. That you cannot too forcibly press upon whomsoever may engage in the enterprise; and this fail not to do. With my instructions are two letters to be delivered as ordered and here are some guineas for expenses.'

"Major Lee, replying, said that he had little or no doubt but that his legion contained many individuals daring enough for any operation, however perilous; but that the one in view required a combination of qualities not easily to be found, unless in a commissioned officer to whom he could not venture to propose an enterprise the first step in which was desertion. That though the sergeant-major of the cavalry was in all respects qualified for the delicate and adventurous project, and to him it might be proposed without indelicacy, as his station did not interpose an obstacle before stated; yet it was very probable that the same difficulty would occur in his breast, to remove which would not be easy, if practicable."

Washington became at once interested in this hitherto unknown sergeant major and asked his name, his country, his age, size, length of service and character.

"Being told his name," continues Lee "that he was a native of Loudoun County in Virginia; about twenty-three or twenty-four years of age—that he had enlisted in 1776—rather above the medium size—full of bone and muscle; with a saturnine countenance, grave, thoughtful and taciturn—of tried courage and inflexible perseverance, and as likely to regret an adventure coupled with ignominy as any officer in the corps; a commission being the goal of his long and anxious exertions, and certain on the first vacancy—the general exclaimed that he was the very man for the business; and that going to the enemy by the instigation and at the request of his officer, was not desertion though it appeared to be so. And he enjoined that this explanation, as coming from him, should be pressed on Champe."

[145]Leaving Washington, Lee hastened to the camp of his cavalry corps where, arriving about 8:00 o'clock at night, he sent for Champe and placed the matter before him, stressing "the very great obligation he would confer on the commander-in-chief" and all else Lee could think of to insure his acceptance of the assignment; concluding with an explanation of the details of the plan, so far as they had been developed, and an expression of his personal wish that he would enter upon its execution instantly.

"Champe listened with deep attention, and with a highly excited countenance; the perturbations of his breast not being hid even by his dark visage. He briefly and modestly replied, that no soldier exceeded him in respect and affection for the commander-in-chief, to serve whom he would willingly lay down his life; and that he was sensible of the honour conferred by the choice of him for the execution of a project all over arduous; nor could he be at a loss to know to whom was to be ascribed the preference bestowed, which he took pleasure in acknowledging, although increasing obligations, before great and many."

As for the plan itself, Champe thought it excellent and understood at once how great might be the benefits resulting from its success. "He was not deterred by the danger and difficulty which was evidently to be encountered but he was deterred by the ignominy of desertion, to be followed by the hypocrisy of enlisting with the enemy; neither of which comported with his feelings, and either placed an insuperable bar in his way to promotion. He concluded by observing, that if any mode could be contrived free from disgrace, he would cordially embark in the enterprise. As it was he prayed to be excused."

Thus Champe's reaction to the project justified Lee's prior opinion expressed to his general and shewed his knowledge and understanding of the man. But the plan, with the tremendous results involved, pressed for immediate action and Lee exerted his utmost power of persuasion. He pointed out that Washington himself had declared that, in this case, the desertion was not a crime; adding that if Champe accepted, Lee would consider the whole corps highly honored[146] by the General's call but that if it failed, at such a critical moment, to furnish a competent man it would reduce Lee to "a mortifying condition."

It was a long and arduous task to overcome Champe's repugnance to become involved, even seemingly, in a situation repellant to his every standard of honor to which his soldier's life had been trained; but slowly Lee overcame his scruples and obtained his consent. Then the detailed instructions, already prepared, were read to him, covering not only his behaviour and procedure when once safely away but also the very difficult matter of the desertion itself which must be so managed as to leave no doubt in his companions' minds as to his treachery but also to insure, so far as possible, his safety from their inevitable wrath. Obviously very little help could be given by Major Lee at this point "lest it might induce a belief that he was privy to the desertion, which opinion getting to the enemy would involve the life of Champe." So that part of the matter was left to the young sergeant, Lee promising, however, that if his escape were discovered before morning, he would seek to delay the pursuit "as long as practical."

Giving Champe three guineas as initial expense money, Lee urged him to start without delay and to let him hear from him, as promptly as possible, after he had arrived in New York. Champe, again urging Lee to delay pursuit, returned to his camp "and taking his cloak, valise and orderly book, he drew his horse from the picket and mounting him, put himself upon fortune."

His anticipation of rapid discovery and pursuit proved only too well founded. None knew better than he the alertness and efficiency of his fellow-dragoons and the effective discipline maintained in Lee's command. Less than half an hour had passed since he escaped the camp, before his absence, under what appeared highly suspicious circumstances, was discovered and promptly reported. "Captain Carnes, Officer of the day, waited upon the Major [118] and with considerable emotion told him that one of the patrol had fallen in with[147] a dragoon, who being challenged, put spur to his horse and escaped, though instantly pursued."

Lee, mindful of the value to Champe of every minute of delay which his ingenuity could devise, simulated a lack of understanding of his report, and when that had been repeated and clarified, appeared to doubt Carnes' deduction and sought to persuade him that he was mistaken. The latter, however, was a competent officer and moreover his suspicions had been thoroughly aroused. Arnold's treason had raised mistrust of loyalty which, perhaps, normally would not have been entertained. Therefore on leaving Lee, Carnes at once returned to his men and ordered them to assemble, thus quickly learning that Champe, "his horse, baggage, arms and orderly book" were missing. His worst fears thus confirmed and, greatly affected by the supposed desertion in his own command, he hurriedly arranged a party for pursuit and returned to Lee for written orders. Again Lee played for delay. While appearing to approve of Carnes' zeal, he told him that he had already planned certain other and particular service for him that night and that another officer would have to lead the pursuit. For that purpose, after apparent deep and protracted consideration, he chose a younger officer, Cornet Middleton, being moved to do so, writes Lee by "his knowledge of the tenderness of Middleton's disposition, which he hoped would lead to the protection of Champe, should he be taken;" but he was, at the end, obliged to issue orders in the customary form upon such occasions and those delivered to Middleton, duly signed by Lee, read ominously enough: "Pursue as far as you can with safety Sergeant Champe, who is suspected of deserting to the enemy, and has taken the road leading to Paulus Hook. Bring him alive that he may suffer in the presence of the army; but kill him if he resists or escapes after being taken."

And still Lee procrastinated. With one device or another he contrived to hold Middleton, giving him instructions in such detail that they bordered on the trivial. Yet rake his imagination as he would, he at length was obliged to dismiss the youthful Cornet, with an expressed wish, however insincere, for his success.

[148]In the meanwhile, and soon after Champe's departure, rain had begun to fall, almost wrecking the carefully contrived plan; for Champe's horse was shod in a manner peculiar to the Legion and Middleton's party was thus better able to follow Champe's course than otherwise would have been possible on a dark night through the deserted country. Middleton and his men had finally succeeded in leaving the American camp soon after midnight, something over an hour after Champe had made his escape; but to examine the ground for shoeprints and the prints themselves, on a rainy night, meant the frequent dismounting of troopers, the striking of a light and thus an ever-growing delay. With the break of day, however, the shoeprints were clear enough and better time could be made—and then on a rise before reaching Three Pigeons, some miles north of the Village of Bergen, Middleton's men caught sight of the fugitive, not more than half a mile ahead, Champe seeing his pursuers at the same time.

The pursuit was now so grimly close that Champe knew a mistake by him or taking any but the most essential risks meant quick capture and no gentle treatment, if, indeed, he should survive that unpleasant event. Therefore he quickly abandoned his first plan to reach Paulus Hook (now part of Jersey City) and instead, with all possible speed and by changing his course, sought immediate refuge in the British galleys which he knew lay a few miles to the west of Bergen "in accordance with British custom." Again, on the new course, he was sighted, his determined pursuers coming within two or three hundred yards of their quarry; but Champe, coming abreast of the galleys "dismounted and running through the marsh to the river, plunged into it, calling upon the galleys for help." This was readily given; "they fired upon our horse" writes Lee "and sent a boat to meet Champe, who was taken in and carried on board, and conveyed to New York with a letter from the captain of the galley, stating the circumstances he had seen." Escape had been achieved by the narrowest of margins and in the gravest danger; but it had created a realistic background for Champe's introduction to the British, difficult indeed to have bettered. Not the slightest doubt[149] was entertained by either group that it had witnessed a daring desertion most narrowly achieved.

Greatly chagrined as were the Americans, they were not obliged to return entirely empty-handed. The fleeing Sergeant's horse with its equipment, his cloak and scabbard fell into their hands and were carried back by them; but Champe held onto his sword until he plunged into the river and the British made it too hot at that point for prolonged search. Dejectedly the dragoons returned to their camp to report their failure; giving Lee, quite unknowingly, a very bad moment when he saw Champe's riderless horse being led back, until he was apprised of what had really happened; thereupon he lost no time in presenting himself to General Washington and reporting the complete success of the first part of the hazardous adventure.

Four days slowly passed, and then an unsigned letter, in a disguised hand, was received by Lee from his sergeant, telling of his further adventures. He had, it seems, been kindly received on the galley and taken at once to the British Commandant in New York who was deeply interested in his story of his escape. The keen-witted Champe did not fail to take full advantage of his sympathetic audience and the good impression he was making. He assured the British officers "that such was the spirit of defection which prevailed among the American troops in consequence of Arnold's example, that he had no doubt, if the temper was properly cherished, Washington's ranks would not only be greatly thinned, but that some of his best corps would leave him." This did not seem, to a reflective mind, wholly consistent with the fire and spirit of the pursuit which the sergeant had so narrowly eluded, but his circumstantial narrative gave such welcome news to the British that they appear happily to have succumbed to the very human inclination to believe what they most wished were true. Their enthusiasm, however, did not cause them to forego recording a very careful description of their new ally: "his size, place of birth, form, countenance, hair, the corps in which he had served, with other remarks in conformity with the British usage." Delighted as were his new friends with the sergeant[150] and his story and inclined to accept both as offered, they apparently had not wholly failed to profit from their long contact at home with their canny northern neighbors.

And now Champe was taken before His Majesty's Commander-in-Chief, Sir Henry Clinton himself. Nothing was wanting to shew the importance attached by the British to this latest deserter and the causes believed by them to have impelled him to his course. Clinton closely cross-examined the fugitive as to the possibility of the encouragement of further desertions from the American forces, the effect of Arnold's treason on Washington and the treatment being given Andrè. Although there were moments when Champe's ingenuity and presence of mind appear to have been sadly taxed, yet on the whole he succeeded in so well and convincingly deporting himself that Sir Henry, at the close of his examination, gave him a couple of guineas and assigned him to the service of General Arnold, with a letter telling the latter who and what he was. Arnold also received Champe cordially, expressed much satisfaction on hearing from him the manner of his escape and the fabulous effect of Arnold's example; and concluded his numerous enquiries by assigning to him similar quarters to those occupied by his own recruiting sergeants.

Nothing could have developed more favorably to the American's plot. Of a surety, fickle fortune appeared at last to be broadly smiling on him.

Arnold's next move was to seek to persuade Champe to join his legion; but that was a step so repugnant to the sergeant's spirit that even devotion to Washington failed, in his mind, to justify it; so he told Arnold, with some surliness, that for his part, he had had enough of war and knew that if he ever were captured by the rebels he would be hung out-of-hand which for him made further military service doubly hazardous.[119] Arnold had reason to appreciate the sergeant's point and permitted him to retire to his quarters where at once he devoted himself to the consideration of how and when he[151] could make contact with the American friends within the British lines who were to get for him the information sought by Washington as to the loyalty of certain of his officers. This contact, with fortune's aid, he was able to establish the next night and his new friend not only pledged himself to procure the information he sought but engaged to send out Champe's reports to Major Lee as well.

Thus was communication established between Champe and Lee and promptly word came from the latter urging expedition; for Andrè's situation had become desperate and further delay by Washington increasingly difficult. And then Andrè himself destroyed his own last chance and ruined the hopes and efforts of his well-wishers. Disdaining pretense or defense, he freely acknowledged the truth of the charges against him and sealed his own doom. By his acknowledgment Washington's hands were tied and Andrè was promptly condemned as a spy and duly executed.

Andrè's tragic fate did not diminish Washington's desire to lay his hands on Arnold. Champe was duly informed by Lee of the fatal event and again urged to bring the plot in which he was engaged to a successful outcome.

But Champe needed no urging. With such alacrity had he and his confederates been working, that soon he was able to send a report to Lee completely vindicating the American general officer toward whom Washington's doubts had been directed, which report Lee duly transmitted to his chief; with the result that "the distrust heretofore entertained of the accused was forever dismissed."

And now Champe had but to secure the person of Arnold to crown his task with success and to wholly justify the confidence reposed in him by Lee and Washington. On the 19th October, 1780, Major Lee received from him a full report of his progress toward that end and the plan he had made. Again Lee laid his communication before his general, from whom he received the following letter in Washington's own handwriting, shewing how carefully the latter sought to guard the secret and protect his emissary:

"Dear Sir: The plan proposed for taking A——d (the outlines of[152] which are communicated in your letter, which was this moment put into my hands without date) has every mark of a good one. I therefore agree to the promised rewards; and have such entire confidence in your management of the business, as to give it my fullest approbation; and leave the whole to the guidance of your judgment, with this express stipulation and pointed injunction, that he (A——d) is to be brought to me alive.

"No circumstance whatever shall obtain my consent to his being put to death. The idea which would accompany such an event, would be that ruffians had been hired to assassinate him. My aim is to make a public example of him; and this should be strongly impressed upon those who are employed to bring him off. The Sergeant must be very circumspect—too much zeal may create suspicion, and too much precipitency may defeat the project. The most inviolable secrecy must be observed on all hands. I send you five guineas; but I am not satisfied of the propriety of the Sergeant's appearing with much specie. This circumstance may also lead to suspicion, as it is but too well known to the enemy that we do not abound in this article.

"The interviews between the party in and out of the city, should be managed with much caution and seeming indifference; or else the frequency of their meetings, etc., may betray the design, and involve bad consequences; but I am persuaded that you will place every matter in a proper point of view to the conductors of this interesting business, and therefore I shall only add that

Written communications between Champe and Lee continued. In ten days Champe had added the final touches to his plan for the abduction and so informed Lee, asking that on the third subsequent night a party of dragoons meet him at Hoboken to whom he hoped to deliver Arnold.

Our sergeant was by this time familiar with Arnold's habits and movements. He knew that it was Arnold's custom to return to his[153] home about midnight and to visit the garden before retiring. It was at that time that Champe and the allies he, through Lee's letters, had obtained, planned to seize and gag the renegade and remove him by way of an adjoining alley to a boat, manned by other trusted conspirators, at one of the wharves on the nearby Hudson.

When the appointed day arrived, Washington directed Lee to himself take command of the small detachment of dragoons who were to meet Champe and his prisoner. "The day arrived," quoting Lee again "and Lee with a party of dragoons left camp late in the evening, with three led horses; one for Arnold, one for the sergeant and the third for his associate; never doubting the success of the enterprise from the tenor of the last received communication. The party reached Hoboken about midnight, where they were concealed in the adjoining wood—Lee with three dragoons stationing himself near the river shore. Hour after hour passed—no boat approached. At length the day broke and the major retired to his party and with his led horses returned to camp, where he proceeded to headquarters to inform the general of the disappointment as mortifying as inexplicable."

Deeply concerned as were both Washington and Lee over the failure of the plan, they were also very apprehensive as to Champe's fate, but in a few days one of the sergeant's associates succeeded in getting through to them an anonymous letter explaining the failure of their plans. On the day preceding that fixed for the abduction, Arnold most unexpectedly removed his quarters to another part of the town to facilitate the supervision by him of the embarkation of troops on a special mission to be commanded by him and wholly unforeseen by the conspirators—an expeditionary force made up largely of American deserters. "Thus it happened" Lee explains "that John Champe, instead of crossing the Hudson that night, was safely deposited on board one of the fleet of transports, from whence he never departed until Arnold landed in Virginia! Nor was he able to escape from the British Army until after the junction of Lord Cornwallis at Petersburg, when he deserted; and proceeding high up into Virginia, he passed into North Carolina near the Saura towns, and keeping[154] in the friendly districts of that State, safely joined the army soon after it had passed the Congaree in pursuit of Lord Rawdon.

"His appearance excited extreme surprise among his former comrades, which was not a little increased when they saw the cordial reception he met with from Lieutenant Colonel Lee. His whole story soon became known to the corps, which reproduced the love and respect of officer and soldier, heightened by universal admiration of his daring and arduous attempt.

"Champe was introduced to General Green, who cheerfully complied with the promises made by the commander-in-chief, so far as in his power; and having provided the sergeant with a good horse and money for his journey, sent him to General Washington, who munificently anticipated every desire of the sergeant, and presented him with a discharge from further service lest he might in the vicissitudes of war, fall into the enemy's hands, when if recognized, he was sure to die on a gibbet."

Here ends Lee's account, apparently as first written; but subsequently he seems to have acquired some further information of his sergeant's later life which he appends in a note, as will appear later.

When Champe was with the British in New York, he, according to Lee and as appears above, refused to enlist in the enemy's forces; but there is another account which says that when he arrived in New York "he was placed in the company of Captain Cameron." In the Champe family is the tradition that he wrote to Lee of this:

"I was yesterday compelled to a most affecting step, but one indispensable the success of my plan. It was necessary for me to accept a commission in the traitor's legion that I might have uninterrupted access to his house."

This Captain Cameron, after the termination of the war, married in Virginia and fortunately kept a diary, a part of which was published in The British United Service Journal. From it we learn, through Howe,[120] that Cameron had occasion to traverse the forests of Loudoun with a single servant and—familiar touch—was caught in one of those violent thunderstorms so characteristic of upper Piedmont.[155] Night came on, no habitation or shelter of any kind was discernible to our travellers in that wilderness and, believing themselves in grave peril, they were becoming really alarmed when they saw through the woods a faint light. Riding toward it, they discovered it came from one of the typical log-houses of a frontier clearing and they lost no time in seeking shelter. The owner of the little home received them with true backwoods hospitality. And now quoting from Captain Cameron's journal:

"He would not permit either master or man to think of their horses, but insisted that we should enter the house, where fire and changes of apparel awaited us, he himself led the jaded animals to a shed, rubbed them down and provided them with forage. It would have been affectation of the worst kind to dispute his pleasure in this instance, so I readily sought the shelter of his roof, to which a comely dame bade me welcome, and busied herself in preventing my wishes. My drenched uniform was exchanged for a suit of my host's apparel; my servant was accomodated in the same manner, and we soon afterwards found ourselves seated before a blazing fire of wood, by the light of which our hostess assiduously laid out a well-stocked supper table. I need not say that all this was in the highest degree comfortable. Yet I was not destined to sit down to supper without discovering still greater cause for wonder. In due time our host returned and the first glance which I cast towards him satisfied me that he was no stranger. The second set everything like doubt at rest. Sergeant Champe stood before me; the same in complexion, in feature, though somewhat less thoughtful in the expression of his eye, as when he first joined my company in New York.

"I cannot say my sensations on recognizing my ci-devant sergeant were altogether agreeable. The mysterious manner in which he both came and went, the success with which he had thrown a veil over his own movements, and the recollection that I was the guest of a man who probably entertained no sense of honour, either public or private, excited in me a vague and indefinite alarm, which I found it impossible on the instant to conceal. I started, and the movement was not lost upon Champe. He examined my face closely; and a light[156] appearing to burst all at once upon his memory, he ran forward toward the spot where I sat.

"'Welcome, welcome, Captain Cameron' said he 'a thousand times welcome to my roof; you behaved well to me when I was under your command, and deserve more of hospitality than I possess the power to offer; but what I do possess is very much at your service, and heartily glad am I that accident should have thus brought us together again. You have doubtless looked upon me as a twofold traitor, and I cannot blame you if you have. Yet I should wish to stand well in your estimation too; and therefore I will, if you please, give a faithful narrative of the causes which led both to my arrival in New York, and to my abandonment of the British Army on the shores of the Chesapeake. You are tired with your day's travel; you stand in need of food and rest. Eat and drink, I pray you, and sleep soundly; and tomorrow, if you are so disposed, I will try to put my character straight in the estimation of the only British officer of whose good opinion I am covetous.'

"There was so much frankness and apparent sincerity in this, that I could not resist it, so I sat down to supper with a mind perfectly at ease and having eaten heartily I soon afterwards retired to rest, on a clean pallet which was spread for me on the floor. Sleep was not slow in visiting my eyelids; nor did I awake until long after the sun had risen on the morrow, and the hardy and active settlers, to whose kindness I was indebted, had gone through a considerable portion of their day's labour.

"I found my host next morning the same open, candid and hospitable man that he had shewn himself on first recognizing me. He made no allusion, indeed, during breakfast, to what had fallen from him over night; but when he heard me talk of getting my horses ready, he begged to have a few minutes' conversation with me. His wife, for such my hostess was, immediately withdrew, under the pretext of attending to her household affairs, upon which he took a seat beside me and began his story."

After the war and, it is said, on the personal recommendation of General Washington, Sergeant Champe was appointed to the position[157] of doorkeeper or sergeant-at-arms of the Continental Congress, then meeting at Philadelphia, but obliged, on account of rioting, to remove to Trenton. His name appears on a roll of the 25th August, 1783, as holding that position. Soon afterwards he returned to Loudoun, married and acquired a small holding near what is now Dover, between the later towns of Aldie and Middleburg, close by the present Little River Turnpike. The State of Virginia has erected one of its excellent road markers adjacent to the spot, bearing the following words:

"Here stood the home of John Champ, Continental soldier. Champ deserted and enlisted in Benedict Arnold's British Command for the purpose of capturing the traitor, 1780. Failing in this attempt Champ rejoined the American Army."

According to local tradition, he later lived in a log cabin on the old Military Road near the old Ketoctin Baptist Church and on lands afterward owned by Robert Braden. Thence he in turn moved to Kentucky where, it is believed he died in or about the year 1797.

And now we may return to General Lee's narrative for the note he appended thereto:

"When General Washington was called by President Adams to the command of the Army prepared to defend the country from French hostility, he sent to Lieutenant-Colonel Lee to inquire for Champe, being determined to bring him into the field at the head of a company of infantry. Lee sent to Loudoun County, where Champe settled after his discharge from the Army, and learned that the gallant soldier had removed to Kentucky, and had soon after died."

Of the sergeant's children, one son, Nathaniel, was born in Virginia on the 22nd December, 1792, and in 1812 enlisted in Colonel Duncan McArthur's regiment at Dayton, Ohio, that command comprising a part of Hull's Army sent for the relief of Detroit. He[158] was in the battle of Monguagon, was among those captured at Detroit and subsequently, in the regular army, saw further fighting and was with General Arthur's advance-guard when Detroit was reoccupied. After the war he engaged in business in Detroit, was a buyer and seller of real estate and built Detroit's first "Temperance Hotel" of which he acted as landlord and in which he was succeeded by his son William. Later he moved to Onondago, Ohio, where he died on the 13th February, 1870.[121]

CHAPTER XIII

EARLY FEDERAL PERIOD

From the close of the Revolution to the War of 1812, there were at least four outstanding movements in Loudoun: the restoration of the fertility of her soil, the disestablishment of the church, the loss of a substantial part of her area which returned to Fairfax and the erection of large country mansions. The great project of Washington's Potomac Company, involving the extensive improvement of that river for navigation, was not, of course a Loudoun enterprise, although the welfare of her people was greatly affected and such Loudoun men as Joseph Janney, Benjamin Shreve, John Hough, Benjamin Dulaney, William Brown, John Harper, William Ellzey, and Leven Powell were at one time or another, as directors or stockholders, interested in the undertaking.

In the settlement of county, the Virginians from Tidewater had brought with them their improvident methods of farming. From the earliest days, when land was more available than labor, scant attention had been given by the Virginia planter or farmer to the conservation or restoration of the fertility of his soil. A field was planted and replanted to heavy-feeding crops, with perhaps an occasional fallow year intervening; and when the inevitable result registered itself in the falling off of production to a point where the planting of that field became unprofitable, it was abandoned and new ground broken up to be put through the same disastrous course. Rotation of crops and the manuring of the land were seldom, if ever, practiced outside perhaps the Quaker and German Settlements. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, so far had this reckless agriculture gone, that even the fertile lands of the Piedmont were recording the result in no uncertain manner. The yield of corn and wheat to the acre had been steadily declining, followed by an emigration of many of the Loudoun people to Kentucky and elsewhere. It was then that there arose in the county a farmer and leader who, measured by the results of his work, may be considered as the most valuable man to her own interests that Loudoun has thus far produced. John Alexander Binns was the son of Charles Binns, the first clerk of Loudoun[160] and of his wife, Ann Alexander, a daughter of "John Alexander the Eldest of Stafford County. Gent." as he is described in a deed to his daughter in 1760. The son was born probably about 1761, although the exact date seems uncertain. In March, 1781, he was, as we have seen, recommended by the County Court of Loudoun to the governor for appointment as a first lieutenant in the Virginia forces and at the same time his brother, Charles Binns, Jr., later to succeed his father as county clerk, was recommended for a commission as second lieutenant. After the war, John Binns turned his attention to farming and grappled with the problem of restoring the fertility of the soil. He had learned of the use of land plaster (gypsum) and clover for that purpose in the Philadelphia neighborhood, whence it is said the system had been brought from Leipsic in Saxony. As early as 1780 he began his experiments, using not only the land plaster and clover but practicing deeper ploughing and rotating crops. At first he was, of course, ridiculed by his farmer neighbors, for the reluctance of the husbandman to change his methods is an old, old story. But Binns persisted. As he improved one farm and his profits rose, he purchased other worn-out lands from their discouraged owners and in time was profiting handsomely from his intelligence and industry. At length, in 1803, his labors crowned with success and the agricultural wealth of his home county rapidly rising as a result of his long and patient work, he sat himself down to write the story of what he had accomplished. His little book was printed in a very small edition, due probably to the high price and scarcity of paper, and was offered for sale at fifty cents, under the comprehensive title "A Treatise on Practical Farming, embracing particularly the following subjects, viz. The Use of Plaster of Paris, with Directions for Using it; and General Observations on the Use of Other Manures. On Deep Ploughing; thick Sowing of Grain; Method of Preventing Fruit Trees from Decaying and Farming in General. By John A. Binns Of Loudoun County, Virginia, Farmer." It was published at "Frederick-Town, Maryland," and "Printed by John B. Colvin, Editor of the Republican Advocate, 1803." "The little book" writes Rodney H. True "is now hard to find and the first edition, but for[161] the copy preserved by Jefferson and now treasured among the great man's books in the Library of Congress, would well-nigh be lost."

Thomas Jefferson, with his restless intelligence, was one of the first to acquire the book. Having studied it and being impressed with Binns' success, he wrote to Sir John Sinclair, the head of the English Board of Agriculture, a letter dated the 30th June, 1803, sending with it

"the enclosed pamphlet on the use of gypsum by a Mr. Binns, a plain farmer, who understands handling his plough better than his pen. he is certainly something of an enthusiast in the use of this manure; but he has a right to be so. the result of his husbandry prooves his confidence in it well found for from being poor, it has made him rich. the county of Loudoun in which he live(s) exhausted & wasted by bad husbandry, has, from his example, become the most productive one in Virginia: and its lands, from being the lowest, sell at the highest prices. these facts speak more strongly for his pamphlet than a better arrangement & more polished phrases would have done. were I now a farmer I should surely adopt the gypsum...."

On the same day, in a letter to Mr. William Strictland, another member of the English Board of Agriculture, Jefferson wrote

"You will discover that Mr. Binns is an enthusiast for the use of gypsum, but there are two facts which prove that he has a right to be so 1. he began poor and has made himself tollerably rich by his farming alone. 2. the county of Loudoun, in which he lives, had been so exhausted & wasted by bad husbandry, that it began to depopulate, the inhabitants going Southwardly in quest of better lands. Binns' success has stopped that immigration. it is now becoming on(e) of the most productive counties of the state of Virginia, and the price given for the lands is multiplied manifold."

Sir John Sinclair in his reply to Mr. Jefferson, whom he addresses as "His Highness, Thomas Jefferson" wrote from Edinburgh under date of the 1st January 1804:

"On various accounts I received with much pleasure, your obliging letter of the 30th June last, which only reached me, at the place, on[162] the 19th November. I certainly feel highly indebted to Mr. Binns, both for the information contained in the pamphlet he has drawn up; and also, for his having been the means of inducing you to recommence our correspondence together, for the purpose of transmitting a paper which does credit to the practical farmers of America.

"As to the Plaster of Paris, which Mr. Binns so strongly recommends, it is singularly, that whilst it proves such a source of fertility to you, it is of little avail in any part of the British Islands, Kent alone excepted. I am thence inclined to conjecture, that its great advantage must arise from its attracting moisture from the atmosphere, of which we have in great abundance in these Kingdoms...."

But it is time to turn to Binns' own record of his work. How desperately poor the yield of grain had become in Loudoun is shown by his statement that some of his unplastered land yielded but five bushels of wheat to the acre and not more than three bushels of corn on a place so worn out, when he took it over in 1793, that his friends thought he "must starve on it." By 1798 he was getting from that farm 15¹/₂ bushels of corn to the acre and the next year, on that corn land, had 27 bushels of heavy wheat per acre. In another place he notes: "I put a parcel of it" (plaster) "on some corn in the hill which produced about 22 bushels, the other part of the field yielding about 12 bushels to the acre."

As an interesting sidelight he indicates that tobacco was being grown around Leesburg at that time. In 1803, as he wrote his book, he expected a crop of 40 bushels of wheat per acre on his farms. And by way of summarizing his work

"There are several places on the Catocton Mountain, that some few years past the corn stalks, when the tops were taken off, were not above three feet high, and which would not produce more than two or three barrels of corn to the acre, and from 5 to 6 bushels of wheat; and perhaps not yield grass enough to the acre to feed a horse for two weeks after the harvest was taken off; but from the use of plaster will now produce from six to eight barrels of corn, and from twenty to twenty-five bushels of wheat per acre; the luxuriant growth of the white and red clover after harvest gives the fields[163] which once looked like a barren waste of country, the appearance of a beautiful meadow."

"... These circumstances made me anxious to cleanse my stables, stockyards, cow-pens, hog-pens, wood-yards and ash-heaps by the first June. This rule I have always followed ever since I began to farm for myself, and can say that my family have never experienced an intermittent or remittent" (fever) "unless attacked with them from home first, and upon their return they have immediately left them. In my travels where ever I have discovered those kind of fevers, I have always observed either dirty, filthy stables, hog-pens or water standing in their cellars or ponds of water not far off; I have also observed those places most liable to dysentaries...."

In contrast to present-day views, he was wholly opposed to growing rye on Loudoun lands, believing that it impoverished the soil and that wheat yielded more in bushels; that rye destroyed grass and clover and injured orchards. He approved the growing of wheat and oats in orchards to maturity and strongly recommended the use of plaster in them.

The result of Binns' work was acclaimed throughout Virginia. His methods became known as the "Loudoun system" and the term became as significant and popularly familiar as the "Norfolk system" of farming in England. Of his work and his book True says:

"In spite of the fact that 'it is not written in a scholastic style,' few books have been written in which more sound practical agriculture is crowded into so small a space. Binns' chapter on the life history of the Hessian fly stands as a piece of careful observation that might have done credit to Dr. Thomas Say himself. The three fundamental supports on which agriculture prosperity in Loudoun County rests were never more clearly or soundly appreciated: gypsum, clover and deep plowing. This was the background of the famous 'Loudoun System' which came to be recognized as the progressive practice for that part of the country a hundred years ago."[122]

Binns died in 1813. His will, dated the 11th January in that year, was offered for probate on the 1st November following. In it he makes provision for freeing his slaves after a certain period. As he left his estate to his wife and nieces, it is surmised that no children survived him. The family, however, is still represented in Loudoun. Captain John A. Tebbs, U.S.M.C., is a descendant of Charles Binns, Jr., the younger brother of our agronomist.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that religious thought and observance were at a low ebb in Virginia in the latter part of the eighteenth century. It was an age of transition, in some respects not unlike that of today. Old ties were being broken, tradition and old-time loyalties no longer received their former adherence. No small responsibility attaches to that negligent and selfish minority of the clergy of the colonial church and to an equally reprehensible element in the early Federal days for remissness in their duties; and their culpable behavior tends to attract more attention than the loyal devotion of the majority of their brethren. It was inevitable that the established church should be regarded as a part of the repudiated British government and when its civil powers and ecclesiastical predominance were taken from it and much of its property ruthlessly confiscated, there ensued a period of confusion in religious matters, with an unfortunate colouring of vindictive animosity on the part of other communions. Concurrently the spread of Methodism took from the older church many of its erstwhile adherents. Indeed, for a disconcertingly long period after its "erection" in 1758, Leesburg appears to have had no building devoted to religious purposes, services, when held, having been at the courthouse. Cresswell, in his journal, confirms this as does the first Shelburne Vestry book and also an advertisement in Leesburg's 'True American' of the 30th December, 1800: "The Reverend Mr. Allen" it reads "intends to perform divine service in the Court House, on the 4th January, at half past eleven o'clock; he also proposes preaching every fortnight from that date." This situation was repaired between 1780 and 1785, when the Methodists, organized as a separate denomination in 1784, erected their stone church on Cornwall Street with galleries around[165] three of its sides and with its interesting old-fashioned sounding board, which church came to be endowed with many associations until its needless destruction about 1901. Then, in 1804, the "Presbyterian Society of Leesburg," which had probably existed since 1782, was more formally organized as a church by the Rev. James Hall, D.D., of Concord, North Carolina, at that time the Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly. The erection of the present quaint old brick church on Market Street, the oldest church building now standing in Leesburg, had already been begun in 1802 and was completed in 1804. It was dedicated in May, 1804, by Dr. Hall. Its first pastor was the Rev. John Mines, who served until 1822 and the first Elders were Peter Carr, Obadiah Clifford, and John MacCormack. Through the courtesy of the Presbyterians, their neighbors of the Episcopal faith held their services from time to time in this old church until the erection of the first Saint James Church on Church Street in 1812, long delayed because of conflicting views as to whether the new building should be in town or country.

This first Saint James Church "was built of brick and quite small, the windows not arched and there was a yard in front. This church was torn down in 1836 and a new one, much wider and larger built, the foundation brought more to the front. It was enlarged in 1848, the vestibule built over the remainder of the yard, bringing the front of the church even with the street."[123] This building continued to be used until the present Saint James Church of gray stone on the corner of Cornwall and Wirt Streets was completed in 1897.

To the diversity in origin of the county's population frequent reference has been made. The inhabitants of the southern part were far more in sympathy in political philosophy, in manner of living, in agricultural practices and in traditional background with the people of Fairfax than were they with, perhaps, the majority of the heterogeneous population of upper Loudoun. Also their leaders belonged to the class which has ruled in Tidewater Virginia since its English beginnings and they none too willingly faced the prospect, after the[166] Revolution, of dividing their authority with and perhaps losing their dominance to the upper-country people. In 1782 they sought to create a new county coextensive with Cameron Parish; failing in that, a compromise was reached in 1798 by which the erstwhile area of Loudoun, south of Sugar Land Run, was returned to Fairfax—"All that part of the County of Loudoun" reads the act of division "lying between the lower boundary thereof and a line to be drawn from the mouth of Sugar Land Run, to Carter's Mill on Bull Run, shall be and is hereby added to and made a part of the County of Fairfax."[124] This action had the immediate result of greatly strengthening the political power of the Quakers, Germans and Scotch-Irish in the remaining part of the county and correspondingly diminishing the influence of the descendants of the old Tidewater aristocracy there.

In the year 1787 Colonel Leven Powell laid out the town of Middleburg on the road running to Ashley's Gap, for his purpose devoting fifty acres on the southerly edge of the 500 acre tract of land he had purchased from Joseph Chinn in 1763;[125] the town, of course, obtaining its name from the position it occupied approximately halfway between the major towns of Alexandria and Winchester as well as halfway between the courthouses of Loudoun and Fauquier. The first trustees were Francis Peyton, William Bronaugh, William Heale, John Peyton Harrison, Burr Powell, Josias Clapham, and Richard Bland Lee.[126]

The much older town of Waterford did not receive formal legislative sanction until 1801. Then by the fifth section of an act of the Legislature, the place is recognized as already in existence: "the lots and streets as the same are already laid off at the place known by the name of Waterford." The first trustees were James Moore, James Griffith, John Williams, and Abner Williams. Section 7 of the act further provided "that as soon as Mahlon Janey and William Hough, shall lay off into lots with convenient streets, so much of their lands not exceeding ten acres adjoining the said town of Waterford, the[167] same shall thence-forth constitute and be deemed and taken as a part of the said town."[127]

The next year another old settlement was, in its turn, given legislative acknowledgment. Hillsborough, somewhat belatedly, was "established" on twenty-five acres already divided between a score or more of owners: Mahlon Hough, Thomas Purcell, the representatives of John Jenny (sic), deceased, Thomas Leslie, Thomas Hepburn, Joseph Tribby, Josiah White, John Foundling, Edward Conrod, Mahlon Roach, Thomas Stevens, Thomas Hough, Samuel Purcell, John Wolfcaile, Richard Matthews, James Prior, John Stevens, Richard Copeland, and Mahlon Morris. The first trustees were Mahlon Hough, Thomas Purcell, Thomas Leslie, Josiah White, Edward Conrod, Mahlon Roach, and Thomas Stevens.[128]

In 1810 Aldie makes its appearance. It was laid out by Charles Fenton Mercer, a great Loudoun figure in his day,[129] on a part of his plantation to which he had given the name of Aldie in tribute to Aldie Castle in Scotland, the seat of that Mercer family from which he believed himself descended. The act of establishment describes the town's location as "thirty acres of land lying on the westerly extremity of the Little River Turnpike road, in the county of Loudoun, the property of Charles F. Mercer, as soon as the same shall be laid off into lots with convenient streets." The Little River Turnpike road had been extended to that point but a few years before. The town's first trustees were named as Israel Lacey, William Cook, Matthew Adams, John Sinclair, James Hexon, David Gibson, Charles F. Mercer, and William Noland.[130]

Bluemont, under its earlier name of Snickersville which it bore until the year 1900, was established in 1824. As early as 1769 Edward Snickers had obtained a grant from John Augustine Washington of 624 acres at this point and before and after that time had acquired other lands in the neighbourhood. He it was who, according to our local tradition, conveyed the first bushel of wheat easterly[168] across the Blue Ridge and gave his name not only to the village but to the gap through the Blue Ridge and, on the other side, to the historic ferry across the Shenandoah which he owned for many years. He was born about 1735, married Elizabeth Toliaferro about 1755 and died in 1790. In 1806 a postoffice had been established at the little village with Lewis Stevens acting as postmaster. When the town came to be formally "established" in 1824, its location was described as being upon "ten acres at the entrance of Snickers Gap, of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the county of Loudoun, property of Amos Clayton, Martha Clayton, William Woodford and others, as soon as the same shall be laid off into lots with convenient streets and alleys." The first trustees were James Cochran senior, Craven Osburn, Mordecai Throckmorton, Stephen Janney, Doctor E. B. Brady, Amos Clayton, and Timothy Carrington.[131]

The above list, with Leesburg, is the roll of earlier incorporated towns of the county. Hamilton (1875), Lovettsville (1876), Purcellville (1908), and Round Hill (1900), as the dates indicate, were not formally organized until much later. The pleasant little village of Lincoln remains unincorporated.

As the eighteenth century neared its end, an increasing number of representatives of the Tidewater gentry came to Loudoun and with their neighbours already living there, built far more pretentious homes than the county had theretofore known. As has been stated in the preface, to tell something of the stories of these old estates was the original incentive to the writing of this book; but those stories, involving as they do their share of romance, tragedy and drama, must in their more extensive narration, be left for a later volume. It is appropriate however, in this place, to very briefly comment on a few of these old plantations.

Among the newcomers, in this post-revolution period, was Colonel Burgess Ball, a great-grandson of that dignified old aristocrat Colonel William Ball of Millenbeck on the Rappahannock, in Lancaster[169] County, who had come to Virginia in 1657. During the Revolution Burgess Ball had served on the staff of General Washington, his first cousin, then as a captain in the Continental Line and later had raised and equipped a Virginia regiment at his own expense and served with it as lieutenant colonel. After the war, his health broken and his generous fortune seriously impaired by his expenditures for military purposes and by his extravagant hospitality at his home, Travellers Rest in Spotsylvania County, he in 1795, was obliged to seek refuge in what was still known in Tidewater as the Loudoun wilderness. On the 4th November, 1795, he purchased for £1741 (the proceeds of his back pay for military services it is said) from Abraham Barnes Thomson Mason, only acting executor and trustee under the will of Thomson Mason, a tract of 247 acres including the Great Spring and running to the Potomac. Here Colonel Ball either built a rustic lodge for his home or, as has been surmised, occupied and improved the old home of Francis Aubrey, calling his estate Springwood. On that same 4th November, 1795, there was purchased in trust for Colonel Ball from Stevens Thomson Mason by William Fitzhugh, Mann Page, and Alexander Spotswood "three of the trustees appointed by an Act of General Assembly to sell certain lands devised by James Ball deceased to his grandson Burgess Ball for his life," another tract of 147 acres about two miles north of the Great Spring for £441, current money of Virginia. Other adjacent tracts were purchased by Colonel Ball or by his trustees until he controlled a very large estate from the Great Spring to the Limestone Run of the most fertile land in the county.[132] Far from his old military companions, he kept up a correspondence with them in his distant abode and many of them visited him there from time to time; for whether surrounded by the refinements of Travellers Rest or the wilderness of Springwood, Colonel Ball's lavish hospitality was a part of the very man himself. He died on the 7th March, 1800, and was buried just outside the graveyard surrounding the old chapel above Goose Creek on the hill above the Great Spring. This first Springwood dwelling was not on the site of the present mansion[170] but is believed to have been on the south side of the present road on what is now a part of the Big Spring estate, in recent years known as Mayfield. The existing Springwood residence was built by George Washington Ball, later Captain C.S.A., grandson of Colonel Burgess Ball, between 1840 and 1850. Louis Philippe is said to have been an overnight guest there and, during the Civil War, General Lee, a cousin of Captain Ball who had served on his staff, held a military conference in the present dining room. The estate was acquired in 1869 by the late Francis Asbury Lutz of Washington who substantially remodelled the mansion very soon thereafter. Since then it has been in the possession of the Lutz family, its present occupants being Mrs. Samuel S. Lutz, her son-in-law and daughter, Judge and Mrs. J. R. H. Alexander and the latter's two sons.

The genesis of Raspberry Plain, just north of Springwood, has already been given. As shewn in Chapter VII, the property had been originally acquired from Lord Fairfax by Joseph Dixon in 1731 and he had sold the farm which he had improved with a dwelling, orchard, etc., to Aeneas Campbell in 1754. Campbell, as we have seen, was Loudoun's first sheriff. He maintained the county jail and the ducking-stool at his home while he held that office. He sold the place in 1760 to Thomson Mason. So far the residence, long since vanished, was near the large spring, now a part of Selma. Mason is said by T. A. Lancaster, Jr., to have built a new house about 1771 (on the site of the present beautiful home). He then conveyed it to his son Stevens Thomson Mason, subsequently confirming his action in his will. Later, according to local tradition, another Mason descendant, Colonel John Mason McCarty was living there when he killed his cousin, General A. T. Mason in the famous duel in 1819, perhaps as a tenant, for the county records show that in 1830 the estate, then of about 250 acres, was conveyed by the executors of General Mason's will to George, John, Peter and Samuel Hoffman of Baltimore for $8,500. It remained in the Hoffman family for over eighty-five years and until sold by the Hoffman heirs on the[171] 29th April, 1916, to Mr. John G. Hopkins who built the present imposing brick edifice of colonial architecture. The estate was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. William H. Lipscomb of Washington in 1931 and, until Mrs. Lipscomb's death, was the scene of many a gay and picturesque hunt breakfast given in honour of the Loudoun Hunt of which Mr. Lipscomb was Master.

Ludwell Lee, a son of Richard Henry Lee, built Belmont in 1800 and lived there until his death in 1836. He rests in its garden. Soon after he died the estate was acquired by Miss Margaret Mercer who, born in 1791, was the daughter of Governor John Francis Mercer of Cedar Park, Maryland. Miss Mercer conducted a school for young ladies at Belmont until her death in 1846. She was a woman of broad education with pronounced views on the abolition of negro slavery and she it was who built the nearby Belmont Chapel on a part of her estate. After passing through the hands of many owners the property was purchased in 1931 by Colonel Patrick J. Hurley, Secretary of War under President Hoover, and since then he and Mrs. Hurley have made it their country home. For several years he has invited the Loudoun Hunt to hold its annual horse show there.

Across the highway Thomas Ludwell Lee, cousin to Ludwell Lee, about the same time built his home Coton, naming it after an English home of the earlier Lees. On Lafayette's visit to America in 1825, he was a guest of Ludwell Lee and a great festival, in honor of his visit, was staged at both Belmont and Coton. It is said that after nightfall a double line of slaves, each holding aloft a flaming torch, was stationed between the two mansions to light the way of the celebrants as they passed from one house to the other. The original mansion has long since disappeared save for parts of its foundations. A second mansion was later erected on another part of the estate and in turn was destroyed by fire. The present stone dwelling, the third to bear the name, was erected by Mr. and Mrs. Warner Snider, the present owners of the estate, in 1931.

George Carter, great-grandson of Robert Carter, the "King Carter" of early Colonial days, received in 1800 from his father, Councillor Robert Carter of Naomi Hall, a tract of 6,000 acres south of Leesburg, a small part of the vast Carter holdings. Upon this land during the ensuing two years he built Oatlands, the most pretentious and elaborate of the Loudoun homes of that day. George Carter did not marry until attaining the discreet age of sixty years when he took as his bride Mrs. Betty Lewis, a widow, who had been a Miss Grayson. Both George Carter and his wife are buried in the gardens of Oatlands. The estate was acquired in 1903 by the late William Corcoran Eustis of Washington and is now the country home of his widow under whose care both residence and extensive gardens retain their justly celebrated charm and beauty. Mrs. Eustis, a daughter of the late Levi P. Morton, at one time Governor of New York and later Vice-President of the United States, has long been the Lady Bountiful of Loudoun. None of the county's residents has ever equalled her benefactions to its poor and to its public institutions of every kind.

Rokeby, on the old Carolina Road south of Leesburg, so long the home of the Bentley family, also belongs to this period. It acquired its claim to fame during the War of 1812 when, in 1814, President Madison, in expectation of the capture of Washington, sent many of the more valuable Federal archives, including the Declaration of Independence and, it is said, the Constitution of the United States, to Leesburg for safekeeping whence they were removed to Rokeby and stored for two weeks in its vaults. It is now the home of Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Nalle who, upon its purchase by them many years ago, made great changes in the old building.

When, in the year 1914, Miss Charlotte Noland purchased the lovely old estate of Foxcroft, four miles north of Middleburg, there began a new era both in its interesting story and in the educational[173] standards of Loudoun. No modern institution of the county has spread more generally knowledge of its charms than the famous school which Miss Noland then founded; and it is particularly appropriate that the institution should owe its inception and development to one who in singular degree is a representative of Loudoun's founders. Those Loudoun citizens of today who trace their descent to one of the earlier Nabobs of the county feel a complacent satisfaction therein; but Miss Noland unites lineal descent not only from Francis Aubrey and Philip Noland but from Colonel Leven Powell and Burr Harrison, the earliest explorer, as well, thus inheriting an early Loudoun background believed to be unique.

As is the case with so many of the older houses of the county, the age of Foxcroft and the identity of its builder are uncertain; but the local tradition is that it is one of the earliest of the many old brick houses to be found in that part of the county and that its builder was one Kyle who had married a daughter of the Balls. The story goes on that Mrs. Kyle lost her mind after the birth of one of her children and that for a long time thereafter she was enchained in the garret of the old house until, during the absence of her husband on a journey, she freed herself and fell to her death down the stairs. Another local story is that the building of the house was under the supervision of William Benton, the land-steward and friend of President Monroe who, it is said learned brick-making in his native England, discovered good brick-clay in the Middleburg neighborhood and made the brick for most of the early brick houses in that part of the County.

With these local stories as a guide, an examination of the county records show a John Kile to have been a purchaser of land as early as 1797 and also a deed to John Kile from William Shrieves, then of Kentucky, on the 8th February, 1814, of 189 acres "on the waters of Goose Creek" for £320. The description, running as it does from one marked tree in the forest to another, requires a long search and careful plotting to definitely place the property, but it suggests the Foxcroft estate. That these Kiles or Kyles were quite certainly people of standing is indicated by their marriages. John Kile, Jr., presumably[174] the son of the first John Kile, married Winney Powell, a daughter of Elisha Powell and her sister Mary became the wife of Pierce Noland.[133] It all goes to suggest that the old Foxcroft mansion was built by John Kile from brick made under the supervision of William Benton sometime during the 1820's.

Foxcroft School has become so much a part of Loudoun that it is as difficult to picture the Middleburg neighbourhood without it as it would be to think of Middleburg without its famous fox-hunting. The school has eighty-five students, representative of the most prominent families in the United States from coast to coast, with students from abroad as well and there is always a long waiting list of applicants for admission. A healthy outdoor life is combined with carefully planned study. The young ladies are all expert riders, follow the Middleburg Hunt at its numerous meets and every year, since 1915, have their own horse show in May at Foxcroft which is always a brilliant affair.

Llangollan was built about 1810 by Cuthbert Powell, (1775-1849) a son of Colonel Leven Powell from whom he had inherited the land upon the latter's death at Fort Bedford, Pennsylvania, on the 6th August, 1810. Few families in Virginia are more deeply rooted in her history than the Powells. Captain William Powell, who, as a gentleman adventurer, accompanied Captain John Smith to Virginia in 1607 is claimed in the family chronicles to be one of the clan. Whether he was kinsman to that Nathaniel Powell who was with Smith in his brush with the Manahoacs on the Rappahannock in the summer of 1608 does not appear. After spending some years in business pursuits in Alexandria, Cuthbert Powell returned to Loudoun where he served as a justice, represented the county in the Virginia Legislature as a Whig and was a member of Congress from 1841 to 1843. Chief Justice Marshall once described him as "the most talented man of that talented family." In 1930 Llangollan was acquired by Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney of New York[175] who have greatly enlarged the old stone mansion and made the estate the home of one of the most famous racing establishments in America. They organized in 1932 and hold there each year the Llangollan Gold Cup races.

The 750 acres which originally composed Morrisworth were given by William Ellzey to his daughter Catherine who married Mathew Harrison of Dumfries. After his death his widow, with her children, took possession of her patrimony and in 1811 built thereon the main part of the stone mansion. There she resided for the remainder of her life and reared her large family. Her children continued to own the estate until they sold it about 1870 to their kinsman Dr. Thomas Miller of Washington who, dying about two years later, never resided there. He left the property to his daughters, the mansion and about 550 acres going to Miss Virginia Miller and Mrs. Arthur Fendall. In turn these ladies deeded the estate in 1900 to Mrs. Fendall's son Thomas M. Fendall, the present owner, who, in 1915, added the south wing to the house. Mr. and Mrs. Fendall have greatly enlarged and developed the gardens, specializing in iris to such an extent that Morrisworth has become widely known not only for the beautiful scene when the five thousand plants are in bloom but for the many new varieties of iris originated there.

Chestnut Hill near the Point of Rocks, so long identified with the Mason Family, is another of the mansions built about 1800. Samuel Clapham, the son of the second Josias Clapham, was the builder on land he had acquired in 1796 from his father. It came to Thomas F. Mason through his marriage to Betsey Price, a granddaughter of the second Josias as related in Chapter VII. It is now owned and occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Coleman Gore.

Rockland, four miles north of Leesburg, was built by General George Rust in 1822 on land acquired by him in 1817 from the[176] heirs of Colonel Burgess Ball and is unique among the county's old estates in that today it still is owned by a descendant of its builder, Mrs. Stanley M. Brown, who before her marriage was Miss Elizabeth Fitzhugh Rust, the only child of the late owner, Mr. Henry B. Rust. Mr. and Mrs. Brown, with their children, spend each summer at Rockland. The 419 acres of the present estate border for a long distance on the Potomac and are regarded as equalling in fertility any land in the county. During the War Between the States the old house witnessed the alternate passing and repassing of the armies of the North and South in front of it along the old Carolina Road. Hospitality and gracious living have long been synonymous in Loudoun with the very name of Rockland.

The plantation that became Exeter was inherited by Mary Mason Seldon; a sister of Thomson Mason, from their mother Ann Thompson Mason. This Mary Mason Seldon married, first, Mann Page and upon his death took as her second husband her first cousin Dr. Wilson Cary Seldon who, born in 1761, had served as surgeon in a Virginia artillery regiment during the Revolution. Though she had children by Page and none by Seldon, the latter secured this land and between 1796 and 1800 built the main frame dwelling with its pleasing design and interesting detail. The large brick extension in the rear was added by General George Rust about 1854 during his ownership of the estate. By his second wife, Dr. Seldon had a daughter, Eleanor, and it was at Exeter on the 16th February 1843, that she married John Augustine Washington, the last of his family to own and occupy Mount Vernon. When the War Between the States broke out, he at once volunteered for service, became an aide on the staff of General Lee with the rank of lieutenant colonel and was killed in a small engagement, which otherwise would have been unimportant, at Cheat Mountain, now West Virginia, on the 13th September, 1861. In 1857 Exeter was purchased by the late Horatio Trundle. It was inherited by his son Mr. Hartley H. Trundle who with his family resides there.

Selma, another part of Mrs. Ann Thomson Mason's great purchase of "wild lands," saw its first mansion built between 1800 and 1810 by General Armistead Thomson Mason, United States Senator from Virginia (affectionately known as "the Chief of Selma") when he was killed by his cousin, John Mason McCarty, in the famous duel at Bladensburg on the 6th February, 1819. He had inherited the land from his father Stevens Thomson Mason of Raspberry Plain. The property was purchased in 1896 by the late Colonel Elijah B. White, who afterward represented the Loudoun district in the Virginia Senate and was for many years a prominent Leesburg banker. He was a son of the much-loved leader of White's Battalion in the War of 1861. Upon his purchase of the estate, Colonel White built the present stately mansion, so famed for its hospitality, in which he incorporated parts of the older house, burned some years before. Selma is now owned by Colonel White's widow (who before her marriage was Miss Lalla Harrison) and his daughter, Miss Elizabeth White. It long has had the reputation of being one of the most fertile and successfully managed farming estates in the East.

Aldie Manor, in the present town of Aldie, was built by Charles Fenton Mercer and named for Aldie Castle in Scotland, the home of the Mercer family. The town in turn was named for the estate and the Magisterial District in which both lie is named for Mercer. The mansion has long been owned and occupied by the diZerega family.

Morven Park was acquired by Governor Thomas Swann of Maryland who, about 1825, built the imposing mansion there. It was inherited by his daughter who became the wife of Dr. Shirley Carter and for many years much of the neighbourhood's social life centered about it. In 1903 this estate of over 1,000 acres was purchased by Mr. Westmoreland Davis, later Governor of Virginia, who now resides there and carefully supervises the many and varied agricultural activities of his domain.[178]

But to the nation the best known of all the old homes of Loudoun has always been Oak Hill. When James Monroe, after long years of service to his country, came to look forward to his retirement, he owned a large tract of land on the Carolina Road nine miles south of Leesburg, long in the possession of his family, which had occupied a dormer-windowed cottage there. On a gentle elevation on the plantation, President Monroe, in the year 1820, erected the great brick house, three stories in height with its porticos and Doric columns which he named Oak Hill. It was designed by Monroe's friend Thomas Jefferson and the plans were completed by James Hoban the designer and builder of the White House and the supervising architect of the Capitol. President Monroe employed William Benton, an Englishman (who is said to have "served him in the triple capacity of steward, counsellor and friend") to superintend the construction of the mansion under Hoban's supervision and to manage the extensive farming operations of the estate which he did most successfully. It was here that President Monroe wrote his famous message to Congress, delivered in December 1823, embodying what since has been known throughout the world as the "Monroe Doctrine" and it was here also that he entertained Lafayette in 1825. Mrs. Monroe died at Oak Hill in 1830. On Mr. Monroe's death in 1831, the property went to his daughter Mrs. Gouveneur of New York by whom it was sold in 1852 to Colonel John M. Fairfax, who set out the large orchard of Albemarle Pippins some of the fruit from which, sent to Queen Victoria gave her such pleasure that thereafter it enjoyed her preference over all other apples. Later when his son, the much-loved State Senator Henry Fairfax, owned the estate he became known throughout the nation for the Hackney horses he raised there. In 1920 the property was acquired by Mr. and Mrs. Frank C. Littleton who greatly enlarged the old building by the extension of both wings. When Mr. Littleton was quarrying sandstone on the place in 1923 there were found numerous imprints of prehistoric dinosaurs—the first known evidence that these monsters had[179] inhabited this portion of the eastern part of the present United States.

The estate took its name from a group of oaks planted on the lawn by President Monroe, one from each of the then existing States, each tree presented to him for that purpose by a congressman from the State represented.

Mrs. Littleton died in 1924. Mr. Littleton and his son Frank C. Littleton, Jr., continue to make the historic old place their home, carrying on extensive farming operations on its broad acres.

On the 20th March, 1793, the first postoffice was established in Leesburg. The first postmaster was Thomas Lewis, who was succeeded on the 1st April, 1794, by John Schooley, who in turn gave way to John Shaw on the 1st April, 1801. Then came Thomas Wilkinson on the 1st April, 1803; William Woody on the 1st January, 1804, and Presley Saunders on the 12th February, 1823.

At the end of the eighteenth century Loudoun was, in politics, a Federal stronghold. Colonel Leven Powell has long been credited with being the founder of that party in the county. The momentous election for members of the Convention of 1788 was bitterly fought. Stevens Thomson Mason and William Ellzey, both lawyers, were opposed to the adoption of the Federal Constitution. For its adoption stood Colonel Powell and Colonel Josias Clapham. Both of the latter, as we have seen, were old soldiers but no match as orators to their opponents and thus were at a great disadvantage in the contest. Powell's great personal popularity alone is said to have secured his election. Mason also won but the county remained so strongly Federal that its vote dominated its Congressional District.

When war with Great Britain was forced upon us in 1812, a cavalry regiment was raised in Loudoun of which Armistead Thomson Mason of Selma became colonel. But the incident in that war which most prominently stands out in Loudoun's memory came in 1814.

After the American forces under General William H. Winder had been defeated by the British at Bladensburg in August of that year, it was apparent that the capture of Washington was highly probable. Madison's Secretary of State, James Monroe, had been in[180] the camp of General Winder, closely studying with him the enemy's movements and seeking to appraise the ability of the Americans to successfully defend the Capital. That he was not reassured by what he thus learned is shewn by the letter he sent to President Madison wherein he advised him to remove from Washington the government's more important records. The President recognized, none too soon, the imminence of the danger. The more valuable of the government archives were ordered to be taken from Washington and Stephen Pleasanton, then a clerk in the State Department, was placed in charge of their removal. He caused to be made a large number of linen bags in which were placed the government's books and documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is said that the painting of Mrs. Dolly Madison, hanging in the White House, was cut from its frame and accompanied the government's records. Some accounts aver that, so numerous were the archives, twenty-two two-horse wagons were used in their transportation from Washington; others who have written of the incident say that four four-horse wagons only were used, while still others claim the method of transportation to have been by ox-teams. However they were carried, they left Washington across the old Chain Bridge and sought their first safety in the grist mill of Edward Patterson on the Virginia side of the Potomac two miles above Georgetown. So threatening was the British advance, however, that it was deemed prudent to carry the precious cargo further up-country; the wagons were duly reloaded and the caravan continued to Leesburg, where the sacks were placed for one night in the courthouse according to some writers or, on the authority of others, in a vacant building in the town, the key of which was given to a certain Rev. Mr. Littlejohn, a young clergyman then recently ordained. The next day the sacks were again placed in the wagons and driven to the nearby plantation of Rokeby where in its vaults they were stored for two weeks until it was safe to return them to Washington.

During those two weeks President Madison was a guest of Ludwell Lee at Belmont, whence he directed National affairs; and ever since that time it has been a primary and essential asseveration in the[181] credo of every true Leesburger that the town was, during that stirring fortnight, the de facto Capital of the United States.

Proud as that memory may be today, the event itself is said to have caused great anxiety to the more substantial citizens of the town and nearby country for fear lest their sudden prominence in the affairs of the nation would invite a swift and disastrous foray upon them by the temporarily triumphant Britons; a denouement which, happily, did not ensue.

CHAPTER XIV

MATURITY

When Patrick McIntyre published the one hundred and tenth number of The True American in Leesburg on Tuesday the 30th December, 1800, he, following the tradition of his craft, probably left his office with a lively sense of anticipation of the town's forthcoming celebration of the advent of a new century; that he could have foreseen that a single copy of that issue would be the sole available survivor of his journal in 1937 is not to be presumed. Yet in the Library of Congress that single copy begins its collection of Leesburg's newspapers and no copy of the paper is known to survive today in Loudoun. Its four pages devote themselves to the proceedings of Congress, to European affairs, to the activities of the Virginia House of Delegates and to the new treaty with France. The local news must be gleaned from the advertisements. The Rev. Mr. Allen advertises religious services to be held in the courthouse;[134] one W. C. Celden, a slavedealer, informs the public that he "has some likely young NEGROES which he will dispose of reasonably for cash;" and on the 4th page is found an item, obviously inserted by a private individual protecting himself with a cloak of anonymity, "For Sale. A likely NEGRO GIRL who has to serve for the term of nineteen or twenty years. She is now about twelve years of age, and very well grown, and will have to serve one year for every child which she may have during the term of her servitude. The terms of sale may be known by application to the Printer." The widow of Colonel Burgess Ball asks that those having claims against his estate will send them to her as the Administrators were anxious to make provision for their immediate payment.

The ultimate fate of The True American is unknown. In 1808 there was established in the town the Washingtonian which became the recognized organ of the Democratic party in Northern Virginia for many years. No surviving copy of any issue of the first year of this paper has been found by the present writer. Until 1841 it divided the Loudoun field with Whig competitors; after that date its[183] journalistic rivals appear to have been of its own political faith, notably the Loudoun Mirror, established in 1855. In its early years the Washingtonian had a sturdy competitor in the Whig Genius of Liberty, copies of which are now rarely to be found. The most numerous available are in a broken file in the Library of Congress, beginning with numbers issued in 1817 and owing their conservation to the fact that they had been sent by the editor to the Secretary of State. As with the earlier True American these newspapers contain much foreign news and correspondence with lengthy reports of legislative activities in Richmond and Washington; and, in addition, an acrimonious and undignified exchange of long-winded and abusive letters in the Mason-McCarty-Mercer controversies. But that a county paper should find its first duty in presenting local news was not within the philosophy of the editor. Only here and there may one find a paragraph recording some local incident—but patient search is occasionally rewarded. A branch of the Bank of the Valley had been opened in Leesburg in 1818 with local subscribers to its stock and T. R. Mott acting as cashier. Then in the issue of the 31st March, 1818, we read:

"Specie. Arrived on Wednesday last at this port after a pleasant passage of two days from Alexandria, the waggon Perseverance—Grub, Master, laden with SIXTY FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS IN SPECIE for the Branch Bank of the Valley in this place. The Specie is deposited in the 'Strong box' thus laying a foundation for the emission of a paper currency predicated upon Specie Capital, which is the chief corner stone in all monied institutions; without it they must eventually fail."

That Leesburg was provided with its first street pavements through the proceeds of a public lottery has long been town gossip. By way of confirmation, there is an advertisement in the 12th May, 1818, issue of the Genius of Liberty: "By authority. Scheme of Lottery to raise $8000 for the purpose of paving the streets of the town of Leesburg, Va." providing a first prize of $4000 and 2011 other prizes running from $1000 down to $6 each, totalling $30,000. Against these 2012 prizes were to be 3988 blanks, to be represented[184] by 6000 tickets to be offered at $5 each; but the astute managers stipulated that many of the larger prizes were to be paid in part by other tickets and that each of the prizes were to be "subject to a deduction of $15 to $100." To inspire the confidence of the public, the notice was signed by the following representative citizens as Commissioners: Prestley Cardell, C. F. Mercer, George Rust, Joseph Beard, Richd H. Henderson, Samuel Clapham, John Humphreys, John I. Harding, Sampson Blincoe, Fleet Smith, Samuel Carr, and John Gray. So successful was the lottery, avers tradition, that with its profits not only was the town able to pave its principal streets but also brought in, through wooden pipes, a much needed supply of water from Rock Spring, the present home of Mrs. H. T. Harrison. To the community that system of finance exerted an appeal so strong that once again it was used in 1844, to raise the necessary money to build an office for the County Clerk. The present County Office Building was purchased from the trustees of the Leesburg Academy in 1879.[135]

Always has Loudoun been a horse-loving country; but it may surprise some of her people of today to know that in 1817 the county seat possessed a "Jockey Club" which was sufficiently strong and well supported to conduct a four day racing meet with more generous prizes than are now offered. In the Genius of Liberty of the 14th October 1817 there is this advertisement:

"Leesburg Jockey Club. RACES will be run for on Wednesday the 15th October, over a handsome course near the town. A Purse of 200 Dollars three miles and repeat, and on Thursday the 16th day, two miles and repeat a Purse of $100 Dollars, and on Friday the 17th and repeat, a Towne's Purse of at least $150 and on Saturday the 18th an elegant SADDLE, BRIDLE and MARTINGALE, worth at least FIFTY DOLLARS. P. SAUNDERS, sec'y & treas'r."

Thus, although the local reporting was definitely remiss in those days, the advertising columns yield much treasure. The times were hard, land sales forced by worried creditors were frequent and often[185] in the sales advertisements a note is made of log-houses on the land, shewing how numerous that form of habitation still must have been in the Loudoun of that time. With the land sales are many offerings of negroes, not infrequently with a humanitarian undertone pleasant to read, for in Loudoun then there was much anti-slavery sentiment not only among Quakers and Germans but, more significantly, among the wealthy planters and educated town folk. Thus in the issue of the 26th October 1818:

"Negroes for Sale. For Sale, a family of Negroes, consisting of a woman and children. To a good master they will be sold a great bargain. They will not be sold to a southern trader."

The financial stress of the day then, as later, bred much discontent if we may judge from the frequent notices of runaway white apprentices and negro slaves, the latter of both sexes; but while in the case of the slaves rewards are offered for their return of varying amounts from $5 to $200, the masters of the white apprentices, apparently appraising their services somewhat dubiously, offered but from one to six cents for their apprehension and return!

Though times were hard and money scarce there was, in the community, a healthy appreciation of the cultural side of life. George Carter of Oatlands advertises the services of a professor of music, seemingly brought into the county by him, who "now offers to teach the fundamental rules of this science in 8 lessons so as to enable those who are taught by him, to pursue their studies by themselves until they may obtain a perfect practical knowledge of musick."[136] Music seemed to have been in the air. Eighteen months later, there is notice given by Henry Krebs that he has commenced teaching the piano and German flute and the French language. He could be found at Mrs. Peers' boarding house.[137] Lectures on English grammar are announced by E. Hazen at the house of Mrs. McCabe [138] and Charles Weineder, a miniature painter, came to Leesburg for two weeks to take orders in his art.[139]

The profession of the law was followed in Leesburg by Richard Henderson, Burr William Harrison, L. P. W. Balch (who was also secretary of the school board) and John K. Mines. Dr. J. Clapper practiced medicine at Hillsboro "where he may be found at Mr. Hough's tavern," we trust not indicating undue conviviality of the gentleman's disposition. There was ample accomodation for travellers, their servants and horses. Enos Wildman announced that he had lately acquired the Eagle Tavern, formerly run by W. Austen;[140] while Samuel M. Edwards presided at the "Leesburg Hotel & Coffee House" which he had recently purchased from Mr. H. Peers and which was "situated on the main street leading from Winchester to Alexandria, George Town and the City of Washington." Yet another tavern was operated by one "Mr. Foley" and, as we have seen, there were boarding-houses as well. Their bars were stocked without difficulty, for Lewis Mix & Co. had a distillery near the mouth of Sugar Land Run and called for rye, corn and oats.

But perhaps the most impressive picture painted by these old advertisements is that of the teeming industrial and commercial life of the town. It was still, happily, the age of the handicraftsman; the machinery age was yet to come. Transportation was uncertain and slow, and country towns largely produced the furniture, tools, clothing and other needed articles for their own inhabitants and those of their surrounding communities. The variety of the activities of the artisans and merchants of the Leesburg of that day paralleled those of other similar towns throughout the nation. John Carney had a "Boot & Shoe manufactory" which was conveniently located "on King street, next door to Messrs. Humphreys and Conrad and immediately opposite the Court House." In advertising his wares, he added that he wished to take on two or three apprentices of from thirteen to fifteen years of age. He had a business rival in William King, who conducted a similar activity and confidently announced that he had "some of the first rate workmen in the State."

Hats were made and sold by Jacob Martin "at his shop opposite[187] the market house" who duly proclaimed "a very large assortment of hats on hand from the first quality to those of lowest prices; including a large assortment of Good Wool Hats, likewise some Morocco Caps."

If the Loudoun citizen of President Monroe's day needed the services of a tailor, they were made available by Thomas Russel whose business apparently flourished; for he advertised for "one or two journeymen taylors to whom constant employ and the best wages will be given." He also sought one or two apprentices to learn his craft.

Jonathan C. May was opening a dry goods and clothing shop under charge of D. Carter, next to the drug store of Robert R. Hough. As a competitor he had Joseph Beard with his "General and Seasonable assortment of Dry Goods" and Daniel P. Conrad who, "at the Stone House opposite the Court House" offered "a seasonable supply of Fall Goods"; he and George Richards meanwhile publishing notice of the dissolution of their former partnership. In nearby Waterford, B. Williamson and C. Shawen also dissolve their partnership in a general store, on account of Williamson moving to Baltimore and Shawen carries on under the name of C. Shawen & Co.

Samuel Tustin was engaged in a coachmaking business in Leesburg and sought "good tough white ash plant and timber—also a quantity of poplar half inch plank." He, too, wanted an apprentice, seeking one who was fifteen to seventeen years old. There was no lack of opportunity to earn a living offered to a steady lad with an inclination to work and a taste for trade. To the more mature, Aaron Burson offered to rent his fulling mill and dwelling house near Union, describing them as being in "an elegant neighbourhood for the fulling business."[141] John B. Bell, occupying a part of William Drish's house on King Street, was a bookbinder. Not daunted by the slump in business, James G. Jones and Company notify the Loudoun public that they have commenced the brush making business "at Mr. Wetherby's stone house, King Street, nearly opposite[188] Mr. Murrays and that they want a large quantity of hog's bristles" for which a liberal price will be given "IN CASH."

S. B. T. Caldwell advertised for sale writing paper, wrapping paper and medium printing paper.

The present day collectors of old furniture will note that David Ogden had removed his business to the southeast corner of King and Cornwall Streets where he had on hand and offered "some fashionable sideboards, Eliptic Dining Tables, Secretary, Bureaus etc., etc., which I will dispose of on moderate terms. Orders from the adjacent country will be thankfully received." In the same year of 1818, Jacob and Isaac Thomas of Waterford announced that they had on hand a general assortment of Windsor and fancy chairs and were also prepared to do "house, sign and fancy painting with neatness and dispatch."

The political dispute between Mason and McCarthy, mirrored in the pages of The Genius of Liberty, was fated to resolve itself into a tragedy that shook county and Commonwealth to their roots and caused no small sensation throughout the youthful Republic. General Armistead Thomson Mason of Selma,[142] a grandson of Thomson Mason, was a graduate of William and Mary College, a veteran of the War of 1812 and a Senator of the United States from Virginia as well as the leader of the Democratic party in Loudoun. Opposed to him as a Federalist was his cousin, Colonel John Mason McCarty, a grandson of George Mason of Gunston Hall, a descendant of old Daniel McCarthy of Westmoreland [143] and who then occupied Raspberry Plain. For a long time there had been political rivalry and bickering between the two men and when Mason introduced a bill in the Senate to permit Loudoun Quakers, when drafted for military services in war-time, to furnish substitutes by the payment of $500 apiece, McCarthy seized upon its political possibilities and promptly accused him of cowardice. The issue flared in the political campaign then on and, to add to the fire, Mason challenged McCarty's vote at the polls. Some accounts say that this so incensed McCarthy,[189] described as being generally a good-natured individual with a strong sense of humour but also with a temper that upon occasion would break out beyond bounds, that he thereupon, at the polling place, defied Mason to personal combat, in his anger naming the weapons, contrary to a universally recognized rule of the code. Mason decided to ignore the matter, McCarthy taunted him in the public prints and although Mason's side had been defeated at the election, the affair gradually might have blown over and been forgotten had not Mason, returning from a journey to Richmond, by evil chance found himself a fellow stagecoach passenger with his old friend and superior officer, General Andrew Jackson. The matter of the quarrel with McCarthy, in due course, came up for discussion and Jackson, ever a fire-eater himself, is said to have told Mason with some brusqueness that he should not let the matter drop. On his return, therefore, Mason sent his cousin a letter in which he said he has resigned his commission for the sole purpose of fighting McCarthy and "I am now free to accept or send a challenge or to fight a duel. The public mind has become tranquil, and all suspicion of the further prosecution of our quarrel having subsided, we can now terminate it without being arrested by the civil authority and without exciting alarm among our friends." He informed his opponent that he had arranged his family affairs and was "extreemly anxious to terminate once and forever this quarrel." How recklessly eager was his wish was shewn by his instructions to his seconds to agree to any terms at any distance—to pistols, muskets or rifles "to three feet—his pretended favourite distance, or to three inches, should his impetuous courage prefer it."

McCarthy, in the meanwhile, had cooled down and was inclined to turn aside this new challenge in a humorous vein. He suggested to Mason's seconds that the antagonists jump from the dome of the capitol; but the matter had gone too far for joking and he was told his suggestion did not comply with the code. Again and yet again he offered similar absurd solutions and being rebuffed and in an effort to frighten Mason, suggested shotguns loaded with buckshot at ten paces, suicidal terms which were modified by the seconds[190] to charging the weapons with a single ball and the distance to twelve feet.

After the fatal outcome of the Hamilton-Burr duel in 1804, a wave of hostility to the whole institution of duelling had swept the country. In January, 1810, Virginia had passed an act making the death of a duellist within three months of the encounter, murder, and providing that the survivor should be hung. Moreover, it was provided that the mere act of sending or accepting a challenge should make the offender incapable of holding public office. Therefore it was expedient that the meeting should not be held in Virginia and a field, along the side of which ran a little brook, near Bladensburg in Maryland, was selected for the affair. Principals, seconds and referee arrived at a nearby inn on the night of the 5th February, 1819, and at 8:00 o'clock the next morning, in the bitter cold and snow, the cousins confronted each other on the field, standing so close to one another that their "barrels almost touched." As the signal was given both fired and then fell to the ground—Mason dying and McCarthy dangerously wounded. Mason's body was brought back to Leesburg where it rested for a while in the old stone house on Loudoun Street now owned by Mr. T. M. Fendall, before burial in the St. James graveyard in Church Street with religious and Masonic rites. There the grave is still to be seen. It is said that Mrs. Mason locked the main entrance of Selma after the funeral and that no one again used it until her only son came of age—a son destined to meet his death, many years later, as an American officer, in the battle of Cerro Gordo in our war with Mexico. Tradition has it that ever after the duel, McCarthy was a morose and haunted man. A gruesome detail is added that long after his death his marble gravestone was removed to the Purcell drug store in Leesburg and there used for many years as a slab on which prescriptions were compounded.

From such a sombre picture we may turn with relief to the spectacle of Loudoun in gala attire indulging in the greatest and gayest county-wide celebration her history affords.

Of all those who, from abroad, came to help the American[191] Colonies in their revolt, none so wholly captured the affections of her people as the French Marquis de Lafayette and as the years after the war passed by, that affection remained steadfast. In January, 1824, the American Congress entertained the happy idea of authorizing the President to officially invite the old general again to visit our shores, this time as the guest of the whole nation. Lafayette sailed from France on an American war ship in July, 1824, arriving in New York on the 14th August. Then began the national welcome which, continuing for over a year, stands by itself in our history.

In August, 1825, Lafayette, being in Washington, informed his hosts that he wished, once again, to see his old friend James Monroe, then living in retirement on his estate, Oak Hill. Arrangements were made accordingly and on the 6th August the Marquis, accompanied by President John Quincy Adams, left Washington in the latter's carriage for the long drive to Oak Hill. On their arrival they were greeted by Monroe and a number of his friends who had gathered to pay honour to the nation's guest. For three days Lafayette tarried at Oak Hill, walking over the farm with his host and reminiscing over the heroic days of nearly fifty years before. Leesburg, determining to show its love and respect for the general, sent a delegation to invite him to a celebration in his honour in that town, to which Lafayette readily assented. On the morning of the 9th August, 1825, "Mr. Ball a member of the Committee of arrangements and Mr. Henderson of the Town Council"[144] went to Oak Hill to escort their guest to Leesburg. With them were two troops of cavalry commanded by Captains Chichester and Bradfield. General Lafayette, President Adams, former President Monroe and Mr. Henderson took their seats in the carriage drawn by splendid bay horses which had been provided for the occasion and the procession set out for the county seat. As it neared the town, salvos of artillery greeted it and the roads and town itself were so lined and filled with people that it was estimated that at least 10,000 (almost[192] half of the county's population) were present. And now, to quote the historian of the occasion:

"The guest of the nation, with his honoured friends, alighted in the field of William M. McCarty, where in the shade of an oak, he was introduced to Cuthbert Powell, Esq., chairman of the committee of arrangements; who welcomed him in terms of respect and affection apt to the occasion, and in a manner at once feeling and grateful; to which General LaFayette replied, with the felicity which seems never to forsake him. He was then introduced to the committee of arrangements and to General Rust, the marshall of the day, and his aids. The General then received the military, assembled to honour him, consisting of the volunteer troops of cavalry, commanded by Captains Chichester and Bradfield; the two rifle companies, commanded by Captains Henry and Humphries; and the companies of light infantry, commanded by Captains Moore and Cockerill, who, by their equipments and discipline did credit to themselves and the county."[145]

After being introduced to a few surviving soldiers of the Revolution, the distinguished party was driven to Colonel Osburn's Hotel (the present home of Mr. T. M. Fendall on Loudoun Street) the street in front of which was filled with a great crowd of orderly and well-behaved citizens. Here Lafayette was received by the Mayor of Leesburg, Dr. John H. McCabe and the common council. The mayor made an address of welcome and again Lafayette spoke in reply.

After a few minutes for rest and refreshment in the hotel, the carriages were resumed and

"the procession moved through Loudoun, Market, Back, Cornwall and King Street. Between the gate of the Court house square and the portico of the court-house an avenue had formed, by a line on the right, of the young ladies of the Leesburg Female Academy under the care of Miss Helen McCormick and Mrs. Lawrence ... dressed in white, with blue sashes, and their heads were tastefully adorned with evergreens. They held sprigs of laurel in[193] their hands, which they strewed in the way as the General passed them."

Another account discloses that the other side of the "avenue," facing the evergreen-crowned girls, was formed by a line of boys from the Leesburg Institute, whose costumes were embellished with red sashes and white and black cockades. As Lafayette, smiling and bowing, mounted the portico steps, he was greeted by Ludwell Lee on behalf of the people of Loudoun with a patriotic speech and once again the cheerful Marquis managed to make yet another appropriate response. After a full year of the young Republic's exuberant enthusiasm, the delivery of a mere half-dozen or so of speeches of grateful acknowledgment in a single day has lost its earlier terrors. At 4:00 o'clock a great banquet was spread on the tables set up in the courthouse square, the guests' table being protected by an awning. Toasts were enthusiastically given and drunk to Adams, Lafayette and Monroe, each in turn replying. With that auspicious start and the stimulus of the potent beverages, it is recorded that as the time passed, the "volunteer toasts" waxed in number and ecstacy. Afterward, the distinguished guests visited the home of Mr. W. T. T. Mason for the baptism of his two infant daughters, Lafayette acting as godfather for one and Adams and Monroe in similar capacity for the other. More gayety in Leesburg, then a drive through the summer night to Belmont and participation in the merry-making there, before the illustrious visitors sought their rooms for the night in that gracious mansion.[146] As they returned to Washington the next day, it must have been with a profound, if weary, appreciation of the county's enthusiasm, affection and hospitality.

In this second quarter of the nineteenth century, to which we have now come, the name of Charles Fenton Mercer, soldier, statesman and philanthropist, is writ large in Loudoun's records. Already we have read of him in his country home and of his founding the town of Aldie in 1810;[147] but the brief reference there made[194] is wholly inadequate to the man and his accomplishments. Born in Fredericksburg on the 6th June, 1778, he was the son of James Mercer and grandson of that John Mercer of Marlboro whom we have already met.[148] His father, after a distinguished career, left at his death an estate so much involved that the son had some difficulty in securing his education. He, however, was able to graduate at Princeton in 1797 and the next year, at the time of friction with France, was given a commission by Washington as a captain of cavalry. When the danger of war passed, he studied law and, admitted to the Bar, practiced his profession with great success. He served as brigadier general in command of the defense of Norfolk in the War of 1812, removed to Loudoun, was a member of the Virginia Legislature from 1810 to 1817 and, as a Federalist, was elected a member of Congress, in 1816, over General A. T. Mason, the election being so close, however, that it had to be decided by the House of Representatives. In Congress he served until 1840, a longer continuous service "than that of any of his contemporaries." Always deeply interested in the project of the Chesapeake and Potomac Canal, he introduced the first successful bill for its construction and it was in tribute to him that those interested in the plan met in Leesburg on the 25th August, 1823. When the canal company was organized taking over, in effect, much of the plant of General Washington's cherished project the Potomac Company, Mercer became its first president and continued in that position during the period of Federal encouragement. Then came the Jackson administration and its opposition and, as a final blow, the organization of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company. The day of the canals gave place to that of the railroads; but that section of the canal in Maryland, across the river from Loudoun, was completed and placed in successful operation, affording to her people better and cheaper transportation to Washington and Alexandria for their products than they before had known.

Mercer was an ardent protectionist, intensely opposed to slavery and an advocate of the settlement of freed slaves in Liberia. He died[195] near Alexandria on the 4th May, 1858, and was buried in the Leesburg Cemetery. On his headstone it is justly reaffirmed that he was "A Patriot, Statesman, Philanthropist and Christian."[149]

Mercer's day well may be cited as the most active and, perhaps, the most ambitiously progressive in business affairs in the county's history. Space precludes enumeration and extensive description of all the enterprises then undertaken but passing mention may be made of a few. The improvement of transportation was a dominant motive. Canals, railroads, turnpikes all were instruments to that end. An early railroad was projected by the men of Waterford and incorporated in 1831 as the Loudoun Railroad Company to run from the mouth of Ketoctin Creek on the Potomac "passing Ketoctin mountain to the waters of Goose creek so as to intercept the Ashby's Gap turnpike road"; a curious and impractical route it may seem to us in the light of present conditions and that it was just as well that the project died in birth. In 1832 another railroad but sponsored in Leesburg, to be known as the Leesburg Railroad and to run from that town to the Potomac, also came to naught. At length in 1849 the Alexandria, Loudoun and Hampshire Railroad was incorporated and built, and under various names has been since continuously operated, thus giving the county its only railroad communication within its boundaries.

In 1832 there was incorporated the Goose Creek and Little River Navigation Company to make those streams available as highways of traffic. Locks, dams, ponds, feeders, and other appurtenant works were ambitiously undertaken. With assistance from the State and the proceeds of the company's sales of stock much construction was accomplished; but during the Civil War the works were destroyed by the Federal armies and they never have been restored.

The Catoctin Furnace Company was another ambitious project. Iron ore was mined in Furnace Mountain, opposite the Point of Rocks, and for a time shipped away for smelting. In 1838 a furnace for treatment of the ore was completed on the property and the ore[196] smelted at first with charcoal made at the plant and later, as operations increased, with coke brought from a distance. The business was highly successful and profitable until ruined by the Civil War. It was this activity that caused the construction, in 1850, of the original Point of Rocks bridge across the Potomac.[150]

Reference to some of the many turnpike companies of the period already has been made. Undertaken for the profit of the shareholders as well as the convenience of the people they, for the first time in her history, gave the county roads fit to bear heavy traffic and were another exemplification of the energy of the time.

When the church was disestablished after the Revolution it was agreed that it would be left in possession of her property. As time went on there arose a clamour among those of other beliefs that her property and particularly her glebe lands should be sold by the Overseers of the Poor, to whom the proceeds should go, their argument being that having been acquired by taxes laid on the whole community, the taxpayers as a body should benefit therefrom. Bishop Mead describes what took place in Loudoun concerning Shelburne's glebe:

"About the year 1772, a tract of land containing 465 acres, on the North Fork of Goose Creek was purchased and soon after, a house put upon it. When Mr. Dunn became minister in 1801 an effort was made by the overseers of the poor to sell it, but it was effectually resisted at law. At the death of Mr. Dunn, in 1827, the overseers of the poor again proceeded to sell it. The vestry was divided in opinion as to the course to be pursued. Four of them—Dr. W. C. Selden, Dr. Henry Claggett, Mr. Fayette Ball and George M. Chichester—were in favour of resisting it; the other eight thought it best to let it share the fate of all the others. It was accordingly sold. The purchaser lived in Maryland; and, of course the matter might be brought before the Supreme Court as a last resort, should the courts of Virginia decide against the church's claim. The minority of four, encouraged by the decision in the case of the Fairfax Glebe, determined[197] to engage in a lawsuit for it. It was first brought in Winchester and decided against the Church. It was then carried to the Court of Appeals in Richmond, and during its lingering progress there, three of four of the vestrymen who engaged in it died, and the fourth was persuaded to withdraw it."[151]

CHAPTER XV

CIVIL WAR

It was a happy, prosperous, and contented Loudoun that the sun shone down upon in 1850. In politics the county was predominantly Whig and in the growing national issues of States' rights, slavery and secession, her sentiment clung to the preservation of the Union; but the seeds of dissension had been sown. The repercussions of John Brown's insane raid on the nearby Harper's Ferry arsenal on the 16th October, 1859, were particularly severe in Loudoun. The madness of it all profoundly shocked the community and seemed to strike at the foundations of existing society, law, and order. Yet a dogged adherence to that Union, which Virginia had been so instrumental in building, persisted. Little doubt was felt concerning the right of a sovereign State to withdraw from what had been a wholly voluntary confederation, but sentiment and a deep feeling of expediency strongly opposed such action. Elsewhere in the State the tendency toward secession was stronger. As the fateful days passed, Virginia was torn between conflicting views. It is probable that the ranting of the extreme abolitionists in the North drove more Virginians toward secession, and that against their will, than the most persuasive arguments of its fieriest advocates.

The Legislature of 1861 recognized the peril of decision in favor of either side, and the gravity of attendant consequences to be so great, that it wisely decided to refer the issue to the people themselves. On the 16th January of that year it therefore authorized that a convention be called, to be made up of delegates elected from every county, for the express purpose of deciding upon Virginia's course. Thereupon such delegates, having been duly elected, the convention met in Richmond on the 13th February, 1861, Loudoun being represented by John Janney, at that time and until his death in 1872, a leader of her Bar, and John A. Carter. Both opposed secession and voted against it in a convention in which it was apparent that its proponents held a majority. Nevertheless, Mr. Janney was elected permanent chairman by a majority of the delegates—a great personal[199] tribute to the man and evidence of the respect in which he was held. Both those who favoured and those who condemned withdrawal from the Union were given ample opportunity to expound and urge their views. When the ominous vote was cast in secret session on the 17th April, 1861, eighty-five of the delegates favoured and fifty-five opposed an ordinance of secession; but their action was conditioned upon the majority decision being referred back to the people of Virginia for approval or rejection. Both Janney and Carter voted against the measure but even while the convention was in session a mass meeting, convened in Leesburg, passed resolutions advocating the proposed ordinance. How great a change had taken place in the sentiment of the county, during those early and fateful months of 1861, is shone in the following table of the results in Loudoun of the election of the 23rd May in which the ordinance of secession was overwhelmingly ratified there:

The great mass of the American people, North and South, neither[200] expected nor wanted war. The overwhelming tragedy of it all lay in the nation being caught and carried on in a flood of events beyond its imagination or control and these, with sinister assistance from fanatics and trouble-makers on both sides, brought on the devastating deluge.

With Lincoln's call for volunteers, Virginia rallied to resist what she believed to be a threat of hostile armed invasion. The die was cast.

It is not the purpose of this book to attempt a detailed account of the war-epoch in Loudoun. Much of her story during those dreary years already has been recorded by other writers. The full narrative deserves, and sometime undoubtedly will have, a volume to itself.

Inasmuch as fate had made it a border county, it was inevitable that intense factional bitterness should exist and that much fighting should take place within its boundaries; but no major engagements occurred there. Loudoun at least was spared the terrible slaughter that destiny staged in Tidewater, the Valley and north of the Potomac.

It required but little imagination on the part of the county government to foresee the probability of fighting in the county and the subversion of the civil authority, with the confusion and lawlessness that would consequently ensue. Therefore the Loudoun Court, headed by its then presiding Justice Asa Rogers, ordered the county clerk, George K. Fox, Jr., to remove the county records to a place of safety and to use his discretion for their preservation. Pursuant to these instructions, Mr. Fox loaded the records into a large wagon and with them drove south to Campbell County. For the next four years he moved his precious charge about from place to place, as danger threatened each refuge in turn, and in 1865 was able to bring back to Leesburg every record intact as will appear in the following chapter. Thus to Mr. Fox's faithful performance of his duty, Loudoun owes the preservation of her records in happy contrast to the loss, damage and destruction which came upon the archives of her sister counties during the ensuing conflict. From a subsequent entry[201] in the court's records, we also learn that no court was held in the county from February, 1862, until July, 1865.[152]

With the inception of actual warfare the county divided along the lines forecast by the election in May, 1861. Those sections in which the Quakers and Germans predominated, continued strong in their adherence to the Union; the remaining people of the county, with comparatively few exceptions, were so deeply and unswervingly attached to the Southern cause as to suggest the burning conviction of religious zeal. To add to the intensity of hostile feeling, there were, nevertheless, in all parts of the county, as was inevitable in a border community, individuals who passionately disagreed with the convictions of their neighbors and these as occasion offered and to the detriment of their former friends, reported surreptitiously upon local matters to the side with which their sympathies lay.

The recruiting of soldiers began among the Confederates, to be followed in due course by the Union men. "The 56th Virginia Militia" writes Goodhart "commanded by Col. William Giddings, was called out and about 60 percent of the regiment that lived east of the Catoctin Mountain responded."[153] Many of those who thus reported for duty were put to work, it is said, building the fortifications around Leesburg, while a number of their former comrades abruptly left Loudoun for the quieter atmosphere of Maryland.[154] But the demand for men far surpassed the resources of the organized militia. For the Confederates, new commands sprang into being throughout Virginia. The 8th Virginia Regiment, Company C (Loudoun Guard) of the 17th Virginia Regiment and White's (35th Virginia) Battalion, known as the "Comanches," were largely made up of Loudoun men and many of the county's sons also were to be later in Mosby's famous Partisan Rangers as well as in many other commands. How far flung in the forces of the Confederacy were Loudoun's soldiers is suggested by a copy of the "Roster of Clinton Hatcher Camp, Confederate Veterans," (organized in Loudoun[202] County on the 13th February, 1888) which, framed for preservation, hangs on the wall in the County Clerk's Office. It gives the names and pictures of the original members and the military organization in which each man served. Each of the following commands are there represented by one or more former members:

while, in addition, were many who served with staff rank or otherwise, such as Dr. C. Shirley Carter, Surgeon on General Staff; John W. Fairfax, Colonel, Adjutant and Inspector General's Department; J. R. Huchison, Captain on Staffs of Generals Hunton and B. Johnson; A. H. Rogers, First Lieutenant and Aide-de-Campe; William H. Rogers, Lieutenant on Staff; Colonel Charles M. Fauntleroy, Inspector General on Staff of General Joseph C. Johnston; H. O. Claggett, Captain and Assistant Quartermaster; Arthur M. Chichester, Captain and Assistant Military Engineer; L. C. Helm, scout for Generals Beauregard and Lee; B. W. Lynn, First Lieutenant Ordnance Department; William H. Payne, Brigadier General of Cavalry, A. N. V.; John Y. Bassell, staff of General W. L. Jackson and midshipman C. S. Navy.

In the northern part of the county, Union men joined two companies of cavalry which were known as the Loudoun Rangers, an independent command raised by Captain Samuel C. Means of Waterford, under a special order of E. M. Stanton, the Secretary of[203] War and later merged in the 8th U. S. Corps. Between the troopers of this organization on the one side and those of White and Mosby on the other, some of them former friends and schoolmates, even brothers, there were frequent and vicious engagements and mutual animosity ran high, as presently we shall see.[155]

With the intensity of recruiting, the county was soon drained of many of its most vigorous and ablebodied men. At that time there was but one bank in Leesburg—the old Valley Bank, concerning the founding of which in 1818 we have read in the last chapter. One day, so runs the story, there suddenly appeared in the town three bandits who, making their way to the bank, then located in what has since been known as the "Club House" on the northwest corner of Market and Church Streets, proceeded to loot it. Tradition says that they found and seized over $60,000 in gold and, placing it in sacks they had provided, fled with it south along the Carolina Road. The greatly excited citizens hurriedly formed a posse, made up largely of men who were too old for military service together with a number of boys, which pursued the robbers so hotly that the latter left the highway where it passes the woods on Greenway, south of the mansion, and sought to hide themselves there. Here they were surrounded in the woods and either made their escape or were killed, the narrative at this point becoming somewhat vague. Be that as it may, they disappear from the story and the pursuers turned to recovering their booty. A diligent search, continued long after nightfall, failed to reveal the hiding-place of the plunder. With daylight the search was renewed and, although carried on for many days, during which much ground was dug over, not a dollar ever was recovered; but for years the story of the hidden treasure was repeated and even after the late John H. Alexander purchased Greenway, long after the war, his children were regaled by the negro servants with the story of the believed-to-be buried gold.

Meanwhile the work of building fortifications of earthworks, begun by Colonel Giddings' 56th Regiment of Militia, had so far[204] progressed that there were three forts on elevated ground on different sides of Leesburg. One, known as Fort Evans, named in honour of Brigadier General Nathan G. Evans, in command of the Leesburg neighborhood, was on the heights on the part of the original Exeter between the Alexandria Pike and the Edwards' Ferry roads, recently purchased by Mr. H. B. Harris of Chicago from Mrs. William Rogers and Mr. Wallace George; another, known as Fort Johnston, in honour of General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of a portion of the Confederate troops at the first battle of Manassas, (Bull Run), crowned the hill now covered by the extensive orchards of Mr. Lawrence R. Lee, about one and one-half miles west of Leesburg on the Alexandria Road; and the third, known as Fort Beauregard, was constructed south of Tuscarora in the triangle formed by the old road leading to Morrisworth, the road to Lawson's old mill and Tuscarora. The property is now owned by the heirs of the late Mahlon Myers.

All of these fortifications were, at the time, considered of great potential importance but in the course of events none, save for a long-distance bombardment of Fort Evans on the 19th October, 1861, were destined ever to be attacked nor, therefore, defended. The remains of all remain largely in place, useful only as local monuments to Loudoun's most tragic era.

The principal engagement in the county between the hostile armies took place in the first year of the war. Soon after the first battle of Manassas (Bull Run) the Leesburg neighborhood was held for the Confederates by Brigadier General Nathan G. Evans and his 7th Brigade made up of the 8th Virginia Infantry under Colonel Eppa Hunton; the 13th Mississippi, under Colonel William Barksdale; the 17th Mississippi, under Colonel W. S. Featherstone, together with a battery and four companies of cavalry under Colonel W. H. Jenifer, all sent there by General Beauregard to protect his left flank from attacks by General McClellan, whose forces lay across the Potomac, and to keep open communications with the Confederate troops in the Valley.

On the 19th October, 1861 Dranesville, a hamlet on the Alexandria[205] Road, fifteen miles southeast of Leesburg, was occupied by Federal troops under General McCall. That evening his advance guard opened artillery fire on Fort Evans, just east of Leesburg, and another bombardment began at nearby Edwards' Ferry. Evans thereupon ordered certain of his troops to leave the town and occupy trenches he had dug along the line of Goose Creek, to meet the expected general attack. On the following day, a Sunday, word came to McClellan that the Confederates were evacuating Leesburg, whereupon that General sought to make a "slight demonstration," as he termed it, that is an increased firing by the pickets on the north side of the Potomac, with, perhaps, a small force of skirmishers thrown across, to confirm the Confederates in their belief that a general attack was impending and thus to hasten their complete evacuation of the town. It was no part of McClellan's plan, apparently, that troops should cross in force from the Maryland side or that a major engagement should be precipitated. Brigadier General C. P. Stone, in immediate command of the Federal forces along the river, nevertheless ordered a considerable force to cross to the Virginia side, both at Edwards' Ferry and also at Ball's Bluff, some four miles up the Potomac. Apparently in ignorance of Stone's actions, McCall, at about the same time, was retiring his men to their camp at Prospect Hill, four miles west of the old Chain Bridge. Evans was in the fort bearing his name. Early in the morning of the 21st, he learned that the Federals had crossed the river at Ball's Bluff, driving back Captain Duffy and a small force of Confederates. Thereupon Evans sent Colonel Jenifer with four companies of Mississippi infantry and two of cavalry to engage Stone. As a result, Stone's men were pressed back to the river around Ball's Bluff.

"At about 2 o'clock p.m. on the 21st a message was sent to Brigadier General R. L. White to bring his militia force to my assistance at Fort Evans. He reported to me, in person, that he was unable to get his men to turn out, though there were a great number in town, and arms and ammunition were offered them."

The Federal force which first had crossed to Ball's Bluff, was composed[206] of 300 men of the 15th Massachusetts under Colonel Devens. Later it was augmented by a company from the 20th Massachusetts. No adequate transportation across the river for a large force had been provided, so that later it was difficult to send over needed Federal support. When Evans became convinced that the main fight would be at Ball's Bluff, he sent forward Colonel Hunton and his 8th Virginia Regiment of which several of the companies had been recruited in Loudoun. To these forces there were added, later in the day, the 17th and 18th Mississippi. Sharp fighting, with advantage first to one side and then to the other, culminated in a Confederate bayonet charge and the resulting route of the Federals, many of whom were killed and wounded, others driven into the river and drowned and by 8:00 o'clock the survivors surrendered and were marched as prisoners to Leesburg. It is estimated that about 1,700 men were engaged on each side. The Confederate loss was reported as 36 killed, 118 wounded and 2 missing. The Federals reported losses of 49 killed, 158 wounded and 714 missing. The Confederate dead were interred in the Union Cemetery at Leesburg; the Federal slain are buried at Ball's Bluff where their lonely resting place long has been cared for by the Federal Government.[156]

Among the killed were Colonel Baker of the Massachusetts troops and Colonel Burt of the 18th Mississippi. Among the very dangerously wounded was a young Massachusetts first lieutenant who, miraculously recovering, later crowned a long judicial career as a venerated member of the Supreme Court of the United States and conferred additional lustre upon the name of Oliver Wendell Holmes.

The Confederates were led in the fighting by Colonel Eppa Hunton of the 8th Virginia. It was he who rallied that regiment when a part of it was in retreat and turned threatened disaster into victory. Colonel Hunton had been born in Fauquier on the 2nd September, 1822, of a family long settled in that County. At the outbreak of the war he was practicing law in Prince William and held a commission[207] as brigadier general in the Militia. After the Ordinance of Secession was adopted, he was commissioned a colonel by Governor Letcher and ordered to raise the 8th Virginia Infantry. For that purpose he proceeded to Leesburg and recruited his command. Chas. B. Tebbs became Lieut. Colonel and Norborne Berkeley, Major. Both were of Loudoun and Berkeley eventually succeeded Hunton in command of the Regiment. Of the ten companies in the regiment, six originally were made up of Loudoun men under Captains William N. Berkeley, Nathaniel Heaton, Alexander Grayson, William Simpson, Wampter, and John R. Carter. Of the remaining four companies, one was from Prince William, one from Fairfax and two from Fauquier. During the war the regiment covered itself with glory by its splendid fighting qualities from the first Manassas to Pickett's charge at Gettysburg and suffered frightful losses. It became known from these losses, as the "Bloody Eighth." Hunton, shot through the leg at Gettysburg, was promoted for his valour there to brigadier general. After the war he lived in Warrenton, practicing his profession with marked ability in Fauquier, Loudoun, and Prince William where juries, frequently including members of his former regiment, seldom failed to give him their verdict. He served as a member of the House of Representatives and later as United States Senator from Virginia, holding in his professional and political life the esteem and affection he had won on many a field of battle.

Acting as a volunteer scout for Colonel Hunton, that day of the Ball's Bluff Battle was a young trooper of Ashby's Cavalry who, migrating from Maryland to Loudoun in 1857, purchased a farm on the shore of the Potomac and became very much of a Virginian. Elijah Viers White was born in Poolesville, Maryland, in 1832, attended Lima Seminary in Livingston County, New York, and later spent two years at Granville College in Licking County, Ohio. With the restlessness of his age he went to Kansas in 1855 and, as a member of a Missouri company, had some part in the factional fighting then distracting that territory. At the time of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry he served as a corporal in the Loudoun Cavalry and soon after the outbreak of the war was transferred to Ashby's Legion.[208] By December, 1861, he was a captain, reporting to General Hill, and in charge of a line of couriers between Leesburg and Winchester. During the winter of 1861-'62 this force was quartered in Waterford and, somewhat augmented in numbers, was assigned to scouting and guarding the Potomac shore. Thus originated the unit which became so famous in Loudoun's history—the 35th Virginia Cavalry [157] or, as it was more generally known, "White's Battalion"—the "Comanches" affectionately held in local memory. Although having but about twenty-five men when wintering in Waterford, the organization increased with such rapidity that before the war's end its rolls, according to Captain Frank M. Myers, its historian, bore nearly 700 names. On the 28th October, 1862, it was formally mustered into the Confederate service by Colonel Bradley T. Johnson of General J. E. B. Stuart's staff. In its inception formed for scouting, raiding and other local duty, and regarded as an independent organization, it was fated in January, 1863, to become a part of Brigadier General William E. Jones' Brigade and thenceforward continued a part of the regular military establishment of the Confederacy.

As the fame and exploits of the command and its leader grew, the latter was promoted major in October, 1862, and lieutenant colonel in February, 1863. That he was not made a brigadier-general in accordance with the recommendation of the military committee of the Confederate Congress was due chiefly to General Lee's personal disapproval of Colonel White's lack of severity as a disciplinarian. Undoubtedly his men took advantage of his protective attitude toward them and incidents of insubordination, desertion, and even mutiny were not infrequent;[158] but as enthusiastic and fearless fighters they won and held the respect of both sides alike. How well and dearly this reputation as warriors was earned is shown by their participation in no less than thirty-one battles, including Cold Harbor, Sharpsburg (Antietam), Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Appomattox and in fifty-nine recorded minor engagements as well.[209][159] Colonel White himself was severely wounded on no less than seven occasions. Such was the esteem in which he continued to be held in Loudoun after the war, that he was elected sheriff of the county and also its treasurer. He was a principal founder and the first president of the Peoples National Bank of Leesburg which position he continued to occupy until his death in 1907. General Eppa Hunton in his autobiography has this to say of him: "No man in the Confederate Army stood higher for bravery, dash and patriotic devotion than Colonel 'Lige' White."

In the meanwhile, as we have seen, the Loudoun Rangers had been organized on the territory west and north of the Catoctin Mountain by Union men and had been taken into the Federal service. In August, 1862, this command, then numbering about fifty, was making its headquarters in the small brick Baptist Meeting House which still stands in Waterford, whence it had been participating in raids on the Confederate portion of the county. About 3:00 o'clock in the morning of the 27th of August, while a certain number of the Rangers were away from the church on raids or picket duty, Captain E. V. White, with forty or fifty men, made a carefully planned attack on the building and after some sharp fighting, in which one of the Rangers was killed and ten wounded, the men in the church surrendered and were taken prisoners and paroled.

On the 1st September the Rangers were involved in another fight, this time with Colonel Munford's 2nd Virginia Cavalry sent forward by General Stuart for that purpose, the encounter taking place between the top of Mile Hill and the Big Spring on the Carolina Road. The Rangers were at the time reinforced by about 125 men of Cole's Maryland Cavalry but the Confederates, by getting in their rear and completely surrounding them, put them to route in a hot sabre fight. Goodhart, the Rangers' historian, comments that these two defeats, coming so closely together, almost broke up that organization and "did to a very large extent interfere with the future usefulness of the command."[160] It continued in service, however, until the end of the war, participating in the battle of Antietam, in the Gettysburg[210] campaign, and in the Shenandoah Valley campaign in September, 1864.

It was in the same September of 1862, it will be remembered, that Lee undertook his first invasion of Maryland. He and General Stonewall Jackson spent the night at the residence of the late Henry T. Harrison on the west side of King Street, now occupied by Mr. Harrison's grandchildren, Mr. Cuthbert Conrad and his two sisters. "The triumphant army of Lee," writes Head "on the eve of the first Maryland campaign, was halted at Leesburg and stripped of all superfluous transportation, broken-down horses and wagons and batteries not supplied with good horses being left behind."[161] It is said that Jackson rose early in the morning from his bed in the Harrison house to examine the several suggested points for the Southern Army to cross the Potomac. He is locally credited with the decision that the place known as White's Ford was best for the purpose and it was there, on the 5th September, that much of the Army crossed. With such a vast number to put across the river, it is probable that all the ferries and fords in the Leesburg neighborhood were used. It is well to note that White's Ford and the present White's Ferry (then known as Conrad's Ferry) are two very different places. The Ferry is at the end of the road now marked by the State, running along the south side of Rockland; the Ford is to the north thereof at the head of Mason's Island. Obviously the depth of the water at White's Ferry would preclude its use as a ford. Goodhart says Edwards' and Noland's Ferries were used,[162] while the report of the Federal Signal Officer (Major A. J. Myers) made to Brigadier General S. Williams, dated the 6th October, 1862, records the Confederates "crossing the Potomac near the Monocacy, and the commencement of their movement into Maryland."[163] Nevertheless the Confederate official reports definitely shew that a great number, probably the major part of the vast host, crossed at White's Ford, including Stonewall Jackson's own men, General Early's Division (which had[211] passed through Leesburg the day before and camped that night "near a large spring"—whether Big Spring or the old Ducking Pond of Raspberry Plain does not definitely appear); General Hood's Division, Colonel B. T. Johnson's 2nd Virginia Brigade, McGowan's Brigade, etc.[164] Never were the hopes of the Confederates more rosy; it is recorded that, as the Army crossed the river, the men sang and cheered with joy and that every band played "Maryland, my Maryland." Twelve days later there was fought the battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day's conflict of the whole war, and on the night of the 18th September the Confederates, in retreat but in good order, recrossed the Potomac.

While the battle of Antietam was being so hotly fought in nearby Maryland, Lieutenant Colonel (later Major General) Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, advancing from Washington with ten companies of Federal cavalry, reached Leesburg where there still remained a small Confederate force made up of Company A of the 6th Virginia Cavalry and about forty Mississippi infantrymen under Captain Gibson, then acting as Provost Marshal of the town. Being largely outnumbered, the Confederates were about to retire when they were joined by Captain E. V. White and thirty of his men. Persuading the soldiers already there to make an effort to hold the town, White and his men exchanged shots with the Federal advance guard; but finding that Kilpatrick was bringing a battery forward, the Confederates retreated through the town's streets. Kilpatrick, however, had already trained his cannon upon Leesburg, thereby subjecting it to its first and only artillery bombardment and greatly terrifying the civilian population. Myers records that "shrieking shells came crashing through walls and roofs" of Leesburg's buildings. The Federal report avers that but a few shells were fired "over the town."[165] After this brief artillery fire, Kilpatrick sent a detachment of his 10th New York Cavalry through Leesburg's streets who came in touch with the Confederates on the town's outskirts. Here Captain White, about to[212] lead his cavalry in a charge, was severely wounded by the fire of the Confederate Infantry and as his men, in retreat, carried him to Hamilton, the Confederate Infantry also fell back, leaving the town to Kilpatrick. By way of souvenir of this little engagement, there still remains a bullet-hole in the front door of the house on the south side of East Market street then occupied by the late Burr W. Harrison but now the residence of his grandson, the Hon. Charles F. Harrison, Commonwealth's Attorney of Loudoun. According to the official Federal report, already quoted, the Confederate "force at Leesburg was principally comprised of convalescents and cavalry sent to escort them. The whole country from Warrenton to Leesburg is filled with sick soldiers abandoned on the wayside by the enemy."

At the outbreak of the war Loudoun was, as it now again has come to be, one of the most fertile, prosperous and best farmed counties in all Virginia. When the fighting was fairly under way, it, from its position as border territory, was dominated by one side after the other but at almost all times was overrun by scouts and raiding parties from both armies. Her farms and their abundant livestock and produce offered constant, if unwilling, invitation to these soldiers to replenish their need of horses, cattle, hogs, grain and forage; and every account of the period refers again and again to instances of seizure of these supplies, involving the greatest hardships, as they came to do, to the rightful owners. It seems to have made little difference as to which side was temporarily in control, so far as these levies were concerned, for both Federals and Confederates appropriated supplies from the farms of foes and friends alike, sometimes, it is true, giving receipts or certificates covering what they had taken, with a cheerful promise of ultimate compensation, and sometimes wholly waiving that formality. Also, as the armies passed and repassed, there were roving deserters from both sides and "the mountains were infested with horse-thieves and desperadoes who were ready to prey upon the inhabitants, regardless as to whether their sympathies were with the North or South."[166] "Numerous raids" quoting Deck and Heaton, "made by both armies drained the abundant food resources of the[213] county. The women and the children were hard pressed for food, but they met the privations of war bravely and loyally."[167] Head, writing prior to 1908, when there still lived many whose knowledge of war conditions in Loudoun was based on personal experience and observation and who, on every hand, were available for consultation, says that the people of the county

"probably suffered more real hardships and deprivations than any other community of like size in the Southland.... Both armies, prompted either by fancied military necessity or malice, burned or confiscated valuable forage crops and other stores, and nearly every locality, at one time or another, witnessed depredation, robbery, murder, arson and rapine. Several towns were shelled, sacked and burned but the worse damage was done the country districts by raiding parties of Federals."[168] Col. Mosby, of the famous Partisan Rangers, adds his testimony, writing particularly of the upper part of Fauquier and Loudoun:

"Although that region was the Flanders of the war, and harried worse than any of which history furnishes an example since the desolation of the Palatinates by Louis XIV, yet the stubborn faith of the people never wavered. Amid fire and sword they remained true to the last, and supported me through all the trials of the war."[169]

This last quotation brings to our story one of the most picturesque figures in either army and one whose numerous exploits in Loudoun and her adjoining counties were truly of that inherent nature from which popular legend and folklore evolve. John Singleton Mosby was born at Edgemont in Powhattan County, Virginia, on the 6th December, 1833. He was educated at the University of Virginia, was admitted to the Bar and when the war broke out was practicing his profession in Bristol. Promptly volunteering for service, he became a cavalry private in the Washington Mounted Rifles and when that became a part of the 1st Virginia Cavalry, Mosby was promoted to be its adjutant. Subsequently he served as an independent scout[214] for General J. E. B. Stuart until captured by the Federals and imprisoned in Washington. After his exchange he was made a captain in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States by General Lee,[170] later a major and then colonel, serving on detached service under General Lee's orders. During the winter of 1862-'63 he built up his command known as Mosby's Partisan Rangers (which had more formal status as the 43rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry) in the territory between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, where, for the remainder of the war, he continued to operate; but the heart of his domain was thus described

"From Snickersville along the Blue Ridge Mountains to Linden; thence to Salem (now called Marshall); to the Plains; thence along the Bull Run Mountains to Aldie and from thence along the turnpike to the place of beginning, Snickersville."[171]

This was the true "Mosby's Confederacy," as it became known, and Mosby's Confederacy in very fact it was, albeit a precarious and but loosely held realm. By Mosby's orders, no member of his command was to leave these bounds without permission.

"To weaken the armies invading Virginia by harassing their rear—to destroy supply trains, to break up the means of conveying intelligence, and thus isolating an army from its base, as well as its different corps from each other, to confuse their plans by capturing despatches, are the objects of partisan war. I endeavoured, so far as I was able, to diminish this aggressive power of the army of the Potomac, by compelling it to keep a large force on the defensive."[172]

He was amazingly successful. His men had no camps. To have had definite headquarters would have been to invite certain destruction or capture. When too hotly pursued, they scattered over the friendly countryside, hiding in the hills, the woods, farmhouses or barns and often, if discovered, appearing as working farmers. "They would[215] scatter for safety" says Mosby, "and gather at my call, like the Children of the Mist." Their attacks frequently were made at night; but whether by day or night so unexpectedly as always to utterly confuse their foes and keep them in such nervous anticipation of attack at unknown and unpredictable points that Mosby became to them a major scourge. Branded as "guerilla," "bushwhacker," and "freebooter," Mosby stoutly and logically maintained that his method of fighting was wholly within the rules of war and when General Custer took some of his men prisoners and hanged them as thieves and murderers, Mosby, acting on Lee's instructions, promptly retaliated by hanging an equal number of Custer's men as soon as he was able to capture them. That appears to have ended the execution of captured Mosby men, save for rare individual and heinous offences.

One of the most spectacular and, upon the local imagination, lastingly impressive forays made by him was the so-called "Greenback Raid" in which, on the 14th October, 1864, his men wrecked a Baltimore and Ohio train near Brown's Crossing. Among the passengers were two Federal paymasters, carrying $168,000 in United States currency. This was seized by Mosby's men, carried to Bloomfield in Loudoun, and divided among the raiders, each receiving about $2,000. It is related that thenceforth, until the end of the war, there was ample Federal currency circulating in Loudoun.

His men were volunteers, many having served in other Confederate commands and thence attracted to Mosby by his romantic reputation and his greater freedom of operation. Numerous Loudoun men were in the organization [173] but they made up a much smaller proportion than in White's Battalion or in the 8th Virginia Regiment. Many of his men were very young. One of these youths who survived the constant perils which surrounded the band was John H. Alexander, born in Clarke County. After peace was declared, he completed his interrupted education, was admitted to the Bar and, eventually taking up his permanent residence in Loudoun, very successfully practiced his profession there until his death in February,[216] 1909. He wrote an interesting book, Mosby's Men, covering his experience with that leader, which was published in 1907. His only son, the Hon. John H. R. Alexander, one of the most esteemed and efficient judges Loudoun has contributed to the Virginia Bench, now presides over the Circuit Court for Loudoun and adjacent counties. Two more of Mosby's youths, these both of Loudoun, were Henry C. Gibson and J. West Aldridge. After the war Mr. Gibson married Mr. Aldridge's sister. Dr. John Aldridge Gibson and Dr. Harry P. Gibson, prominent Leesburg physicians, are the sons of this marriage. Did space permit many others Loudoun members of the command could be mentioned. The instances given go to show how the sons of Mosby's Rangers still carry on in Loudoun.

On the 17th June, 1863, Lee's Army was on its way north for its second invasion of Maryland and toward the fateful field of Gettysburg. General J. E. B. Stuart, in command of the Confederate Cavalry, had established his temporary headquarters at Middleburg. Early that morning Colonel Munford, with the 2nd and 3rd Virginia Cavalry, acting as advance guard of General Fitzhugh Lee, was foraging in the neighborhood of Aldie with Colonel Williams C. Wickham, who had with him the 1st, 4th, and 5th Virginia Cavalry. While Colonel Thomas L. Rosser was carrying out Colonel Wickham's orders to select a camp near Aldie, he came in contact with General G. M. Griggs' 2nd Cavalry Division of Federals made up of General Kilpatrick's Brigade (2nd and 4th New York, 1st Massachusetts and 6th Ohio Regiments) the 1st Maine Cavalry and Randol's Battery. These forces attacked each other with the greatest determination and courage. Charges were followed by counter-charges and desperately contending every foot of ground the adversaries surged up and down the Little River Turnpike and the Snickerville Road, where two squadrons of sharpshooters from the 2nd and 3rd Virginia Cavalry were holding back Kilpatrick's men. Says Colonel Munford in his report of the fight:

"As the enemy came up again the sharpshooters opened upon him with terrible effect from the stone wall, which they had regained, and checked him completely. I do not hesitate to say that I have never[217] seen so many Yankees killed in the same space of ground in any fight I have seen on any battle field in Virginia that I have been over. We held our ground until ordered by the major-general commanding to retire, and the Yankees had been so severely punished that they did not follow. The sharpshooters of the 5th were mostly captured, this regiment suffering more than any other."[174]

In truth the Federal soldiers had paid dearly for their victory. Dr. James Moore, who was acting as surgeon with Kilpatrick and afterward wrote a life of that General, calls this engagement "by far the most bloody cavalry battle of the war."[175]

While all this desperate fighting was going on around Aldie, Colonel A. N. Duffie, with the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry, was on a scouting expedition, having crossed the Bull Run Mountain at Thoroughfare Gap and being headed for Noland's Ferry. His orders were to camp on the night of the 17th at Middleburg. Approaching that town about 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon, he drove in Stuart's pickets "so quickly that Stuart and his staff were compelled to make a retreat more rapid than was consistent with dignity and comfort."[176] The Confederate forces at Aldie were notified of the situation and ordered to Middleburg but Duffie apparently was not aware of the heavy fighting that had taken place at Aldie. When he at length succeeded in getting a message through to Aldie, asking reinforcements, Kilpatrick replied that his brigade was too exhausted to respond, though he would report the situation at once to General Pleasanton, in command of the Federals. "Thus" writes H. B. McClellan, "Col. Duffie was left to meet his fate.... His men fought bravely and repelled more than one charge before they were driven from the town, retiring by the same road upon which they had advanced." But during the night Duffie was surrounded by Chambliss's Brigade and although Duffie himself, with four of his officers and twenty-seven men, eluded their foes and reached Centreville the next afternoon, he was obliged to report a loss of twenty officers and[218] 248 men. Some of these, at first thought killed or captured, also succeeded in getting back to the Federal lines but the defeat had been crushing.

After Gettysburg, General Lee's Army passed through Loudoun, followed by General Meade. Again, on the 14th July, 1864, General Early, after the battle of Monocacy, crossed with his Army from Maryland to Virginia at White's Ford. After resting his men in and around Leesburg he proceeded by way of Purcellville and Snickers Gap to the Valley.

All this time Mosby had been active in his "Confederacy" and attacks on the Federal communications also had been made by White's Battalion when in and around Loudoun. These attacks, frequently successful and always without warning, had caused great losses to the Federals and forced them to keep a large number of men engaged in their rear who badly were needed elsewhere. On the 16th August, 1864, General Grant, determining to end the menace, sent the following order to Major General Sheridan:

"If you can possibly spare a division of Cavalry, send them through Loudoun County to destroy and carry off the crops, animals, negroes and all men under fifty years of age capable of bearing arms. In this way you will get many of Mosby's men. All male citizens under fifty can fairly be held as prisoners of war, and not as citizen prisoners. If not already soldiers, they will be made so the moment the rebel army gets hold of them."

But Sheridan at that time was far too busy with his campaign in the Valley immediately to comply. It was not until after his decisive victory over Early at Cedar Creek on the 19th October, that he felt he could act. On the 27th November he issued the following orders to Major General Merritt in command of the 1st Cavalry Division:

"You are hereby directed to proceed, tomorrow morning at 7 o'clock, with two brigades of your division now in camp, to the east side of the Blue Ridge, via Ashby's Gap, and operate against the guerillas in the district of country bounded on the south by the line of the Manassas Gap Railroad, as far east as White Plains; on the[219] east by the Bull Run Range; on the west by the Shenandoah River; and on the north by the Potomac.

"This section has been the hot-bed of lawless bands who have from time to time depredated upon small parties on the line of the army communications, on safeguards left at houses, and on small parties of our troops. Their real object is plunder and highway robbery.

"To clear the country of these parties that are bringing destruction upon the innocent as well as their guilty supporters by their cowardly acts, you will consume and destroy all forage and subsistence, burn all barns and mills and their contents and drive off all stock in the region, the boundaries of which are above described. This order must be literally executed, bearing in mind, however that no dwellings are to be burned and that no personal violence be offered the citizens.

"The ultimate results of the guerilla system of warfare is the total destruction of all private rights in the country occupied by such parties. The destruction may as well commence at once and the responsibility of it must rest upon the authorities at Richmond, who have acknowledged the legitimacy of guerilla bands.

"The injury done to them by this army is very slight, the injury they have indirectly inflicted upon the people and upon the rebel army may be counted by millions.

"The reserve brigade of your division will move to Snickersville on the 29th. Snickersville should be your point of concentration, and the point from which you should operate in destroying toward the Potomac.

"Four days' subsistence will be taken by your command. Forage can be gathered from the country through which you pass.

"By command of Major-General Sheridan.
James W. Forsyth,
Lieutenant-Colonel and Chief of Staff.

In pursuance of these orders Federal soldiers in three bodies entered the county on their devastating work. Williamson, himself a member of Mosby's band and an eyewitness of what followed, writes:

"The Federals separated into three parties, one of which went along the Bloomfield road and down Loudoun, in the direction of the Potomac; another passed along the Piedmont pike to Rectortown, Salem and around to Middleburg; while the main body kept along the turnpike to Aldie, where they struck the Snickersville pike. Thus they scoured the country completely from the Blue Ridge to the Bull Run Mountains. From Monday afternoon, November 28th, until Friday morning December 2nd, they ranged through the beautiful valley of Loudoun and a portion of Fauquier County, burning and laying waste. They robbed the people of everything they could destroy or carry off—horses, cows, cattle, sheep, hogs etc; killing poultry, insulting women, pillaging houses and in many cases robbing even the poor negroes. They burned all the mills and factories as well as hay, wheat, corn, straw and every description of forage. Barns and stables, whether full or empty, were burned—Colonel Mosby did not call the command together, therefore there was no organized resistance, but Rangers managed to save a great deal of livestock for the farmers by driving it off to places of safety. In many instances, after the first day of burning, we would run off stock from the path of the raiders into the limits of the district already burned over, and there it was kept undisturbed or in a situation where it could be more easily driven off and concealed...."[177]

The loss to the county was enormous. Although many old and well-built mills, and barns of brick or stone were not destroyed, as is conclusively proven by their survival to this day, and the devastation did not equal that in the Valley,[178] yet how great was the aggregate damage is suggested by a report submitted to the second session of the Fifty-first Congress (1890-91) in which sworn claims of adherents to the Union alone amounted to $199,228.24 for property burned and to an additional $61,821.13 for live stock taken; the report[221] adding that there had been no estimate of the losses sustained by those whose sympathies were with the Confederates.[179] That the total loss to the people of the County, as a result of Sheridan's order, was over a million dollars well may be believed—and this in a community which had been raided and robbed and levied upon by both armies, as well as many outlaw bands for over three years of warfare! The privations and suffering of the following winter and spring can but be imagined. It may be noted that a Federal Brigade, under General Deven, established its headquarters at Lovettsville about Christmas time and that, although his soldiers patrolled all parts of Loudoun during that winter, yet in spite of all the war-time strain and hatreds, their relations with the people of the county were far better than usually prevailed.

"The year 1864 closed with a gloomy outlook for the Confederacy" writes Williamson and adds that "the winter in Virginia was very severe and the ground was covered with snow and sleet for the better part of the season." About all the comfort Loudoun had was in the repeated rumours of peace to which the people eagerly listened and repeated one to another.

CHAPTER XVI

RECOVERY

From east to west, from north to south, her farm lands ravaged, plundered and made desolate, many of her sons dead or incapacitated by wounds or sickness, her barns, outbuildings and fences burned, her horses, cattle and other livestock stolen, confiscated or wantonly driven away, Loudoun presented, in that summer of 1865, a sad and dispiriting contrast to the fruitful abundance of five years before. By the terms of the surrender at Appomattox the Southern cavalryman had been allowed to retain the horse or horses owned by him; but as the infantry started on their long trudge homeward, they carried with them little beyond the ragged clothes they wore and their determination to begin life anew. How slowly and with what unremitting toil and self-denial the ruined farms were restored, the fields again made to yield their corn and wheat and clover, rails split to rebuild the vanished fences, makeshifts at first and then better structures erected to replace those burned, only the people who lived through those years of poverty could tell; and on that slow path upward from ruin and desolation the part borne by the women equalled, perhaps surpassed, that enacted by the men. The County still reverently relates the uncomplaining toil and sacrifices of mothers, wives and daughters during that grievous time.

Bad as conditions were for the majority, they were even worse for the large landowners, the former wealthier class. Gentlefolk, wholly unused to manual labor, perforce turned to tasks theretofore the work of their slaves. The men ploughed and hoed, their women cooked, performed every household task and somehow kept up their homes. One of the few bright spots in the drab picture was that dwelling-houses seldom had been destroyed; thus at least there was human shelter. Also the small towns and hamlets, having escaped the devastation of the farm lands, were to a certain extent nuclei from which the new life could be built.

County government had well-nigh ceased to function during the war. All those who had borne arms against the United States or otherwise aided and abetted the Confederacy—that is, a very definite[223] majority of the men of the county—now found themselves disfranchised; the minority of Union men, Quakers, Germans or others who had discreetly avoided acting with one side or the other, controlled the first local election after the peace. It was held on the 1st day of June, 1865. The court record, after a long silence and copied into its books later, begins again on the 10th of the following month:

"At a County Court held for Loudoun County on Monday the 10th day of July, 1865, present: George Abel, R. M. Bentley, Francis M. Carter, John Compher, Thomas J. Cost, John P. Derry, Enoch Fenton, Herod Frasier, Fenton Furr, Henry Gaver, John Grubb, William H. Gray, Eli J. Hoge, Joseph Janney, Alexander L. Lee, Charles L. Mankin, Asbury M. Nixon, Rufus Smith, Basil W. Shoemaker, Jno. L. Stout, Mahlon Thomas, Lott Tavenner, Henry S. Taylor, Michael Wiard, Jno. Wolford, Thomas Burr Williams and James M. Wallace. Gentlemen Justices elected who were on the 1st day of June 1865 duly elected Justices of the peace for the County of Loudoun, and who have been commissioned by the Governor, were duly qualified as such Justices by William F. Mercer, one of the Commissioners of Election for said County, appointed by the Governor by taking the several oaths prescribed by law."[180]

The new county officers were William H. Gray, presiding justice of the court; Charles P. Janney, clerk of the county; Samuel C. Luckett, sheriff; William B. Downey, commonwealth's attorney; Samuel Ball, commissioner of revenue.

"George K. Fox Jr., as Clerk of this Court having removed from the County the records of this Court, under an order of Court heretofore made, he is now ordered to return the said records to the Clerks office as soon as possible."[181]

These instructions were carried out by Mr. Fox. For over three years he had guarded his trust, without opportunity to return to Leesburg or see a member of his family during that time. He now[224] found himself disfranchised; but between him and Charles P. Janney the new county clerk, who before the war had worked in his office, there was a strong friendship so that Mr. Janney appointed Mr. Fox his assistant, in which position he served until his reëlection as county clerk, which occurred as soon as the civil disabilities of the former Confederates were removed. He continued as county clerk until his death on the 14th of December, 1872, at the early age of forty years. How truly valued was he in Loudoun was shown at his funeral which is said to have been the largest the county had known to that time.

On the 2nd March, 1867, the Congress passed that indefensible Reconstruction Act which was to leave more bitterness in the South than the war itself, but, in all that followed, Virginia suffered less than other States of the old Confederacy. Under that act Virginia became Military District Number One and General John M. Schofield, formerly the head of the Potomac Division of the Federal Army, was given command. His choice was a most fortunate one for Virginia. Of him Richard L. Morton writes:

"He was conservative, just and wise; and it was due to his moral courage that Virginia was spared the reign of terror that existed in most of the Southern States during the Reconstruction period. His policy was to gain the confidence and support of the people of the State and to interfere as little as possible with civil authorities."[182]

General Eppa Hunton came to know him well and between the two men there developed mutual respect and friendship. Hunton, in his biography, has this to say of conditions under Schofield's rule:

"Fortunately for us the commanders in this district were good men—not disposed to oppress us—and we had for several years a fairly good military government in Virginia—our judges were military appointees; our Sheriff and all the officers in this State owed their appointment to the military Governor of Virginia. Our military judge was Lysander Hill. We had great apprehensions of him as our circuit judge when he took the place of Judge Henry W. Thomas, of Fairfax, but Hill turned out to be a first rate man and a fine judge.[225] He was the best listener I ever addressed on the bench. His decisions were able and generally satisfactory. He certainly was not influenced in the slightest degree by politics on the bench—(Schofield) tried in every way to mitigate the hardships of our situation and gave us the best government that was possible under the circumstances."[183]

But even Schofield could not protect Virginia from the more vicious legislation of the unscrupulous radicals then in control in Washington. At the close of the war the necessities of the situation were working out, in Virginia at least, a reasonable and moderate readjustment of relations between the white people and the former slaves. The negroes looked to their old masters for employment and the whites, in their own great poverty, gave to them what they could; and while wages were very low, the negro was assured of shelter and food. The enfranchisement of the negroes in March, 1865, the establishment of the Freedman's Bureau in the following June but more particularly the organization of the Union League late in 1866 broke down the friendly relations between the races. The representatives of those politically begotten organizations taught the ignorant and always credulous negroes that the whites were their enemies and oppressors, discouraged them from working and persuaded them to ally themselves with the disreputable "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" who were perniciously active in their efforts to foment trouble, for their own profit, between white and black. The worst results were registered in the eastern and southern parts of the State where the more extensive of the old plantations and consequently the densest negro population existed; in Loudoun, most fortunately, there was little or no racial animosity and the negroes appear to have been more content and appreciative, as well as dependable in their work, than in many of the other counties.

To meet the confusion and turmoil in the State and the threatened complete overthrow of white supremacy, the best and most representative men in Virginia formed, in December, 1867, the Conservative[226] Party, drawing its membership from former Whigs and Democrats alike. In the election of 1869, to accept or reject a new Constitution, the Conservatives were successful, the proposed Constitution adopted and the State rescued from fast developing chaos. It is remembered that in this election John Janney made what was practically his last public appearance. He had been an outstanding leader of the Whigs in Virginia, had opposed secession but, at the end, stood with Lee and many other Virginians in the belief that coercion of the States by the Federal Government was the worse evil of the two. Before this decisive election of 1869, he had suffered a stroke of paralysis; but to set an example to his former Whig associates, he had himself driven in his carriage to the polls to vote the Conservative ticket. It was a last and effective act of patriotism. He died in January, 1872.[184]

By the Act of Congress of the 26th January, 1870, the civil disabilities of the former Confederates were removed, Virginia was enabled to take her rightful place again as a sovereign State in the Union and a cleaning up of the carpetbaggers and scalawags was begun; but it is said to have taken nearly another ten years to rid the people of the last of them in those counties with the greater negro population.[185]

In this period of confusion there came to Shelburne parish in 1869, as its Rector, the Rev. Richard Terrell Davis of Albemarle who had served as a Chaplain in the Confederate Army and whose sympathetic ministrations to his new neighbours were of county-wide solace. About that time the late Charles Paxton of Pennsylvania came to Loudoun, purchased that part of Exeter which lies near the northerly boundary of Leesburg and began the building of the great house which he named Carlheim and which many years later was to become the Paxton Memorial Home for ailing children, established and endowed by his widow in her will in memory of their daughter. Dr. Davis and Mr. Paxton became firm friends[227] and through that friendship and Dr. Davis' knowledge of those most needing help, many a poor man in Loudoun was able to earn a sadly needed living wage during the long construction of Carlheim. It is remembered that on Dr. Davis' greatly lamented death in 1892, so deeply had he engaged the affections of his adopted county, the negroes, upon learning of a project of his white friends to erect in his memory a suitable tombstone, begged that they too might contribute to its cost. It was during the rectorship of Dr. Davis, and largely through his influence, that the building of the present large gray stone church edifice of Saint James in Leesburg was undertaken.

Slowly, very slowly, the people doggedly fought their way up the long and often discouraging hill of recovery. The Spanish-American War, petty in itself, was in its foreign and, particularly, in its domestic implications, of major importance; for it showed that, with a new generation of Americans taking its place, the old sectional tears and rents were growing together and that the national fabric once again was becoming truly restored. In the last decade of the nineteenth century there was a notable inflow of new residents, new money, new determination, which continued with the succeeding years and of which the most significant result was the vigorous growth of the horse and sport-loving community in and around Middleburg, resulting in the development of one of the great, perhaps the greatest, centers of fox-hunting and horse-showing in America. It should be here recorded that to the purchase by Mr. Daniel C. Sands of an estate near Middleburg in 1907 and to his love of horses and country life, as well as his tireless energy in spreading among his many Northern friends knowledge of the charm of his new neighbourhood and building on the Loudoun horse-loving traditions, existing since early settlement, may be ascribed the great prosperity and international repute of the Middleburg environment of today. But the county at large, as well as Middleburg, has reason to be grateful to Mr. Sands. During his more than thirty years of residence here he, consistently and continuously, has been not only one of the county's most constructive citizens but one of the most generous and public-spirited as well.

[228]Again we are reminded of the extraordinary part horses and the various sports connected with them play in Loudoun's life. And all that is no matter of present day chance but the legitimate flowering of very old and greatly cherished traditions. Archdeacon Burnaby, in writing of his travels in Virginia in 1759-1760, was moved to remark that Lord Fairfax's "chief if not sole amusement was hunting; and in pursuit of this exercise he frequently carried his hounds to distant parts of the country; and entertained any gentleman of good character and decent appearance, who attended him in the field, at the inn or ordinary, where he took up his residence for the hunting season."[186] One of the ordinaries thus frequented by Lord Fairfax was West's on the old Carolina Road, just south of the present Lee-Jackson Highway, and in the territory now hunted by the Middleburg pack.

The county supports two hunts—the great Middleburg Hunt, turning out upon occasion a field of over three hundred riders, under the joint mastership of Miss Charlotte Noland and Mr. Sands and hunting the territory around that town; and the smaller but hard-riding Loudoun Hunt, covering the Leesburg neighborhood and of which Judge J. R. H. Alexander is Master. In legitimate succession to those of long ago, annual horse shows are held at Middleburg, Foxcroft, Leesburg, and Unison-Bloomfield, the great Llangollan races are run annually on that beautiful and historic estate, while just over the Fauquier boundary is Upperville with its annual horse show, the oldest in America. In short Loudoun is and always has been a horse-loving county and thus very naturally it is widely known as the Leicestershire of America. Today the raising and training of fine horses, together with the maintenance of numerous herds of dairy cattle (especially of the Guernsey breed) the fattening of great numbers of beef cattle, the raising of hogs, sheep and poultry, the growth and development on her many hillsides of extensive and well cared-for apple orchards, all augment the agricultural revenue Loudoun[229] derives from her ever smiling fields of corn and wheat, grass and clover.

In the year 1900 the Southern Railway Company, then in control of the old Alexandria, Loudoun and Hampshire Railroad, extended it to Snickersville, encouraged by many people from Washington and elsewhere who had built summer homes at and around Snickers' Gap. The railroad company named its new station near the village Bluemont and the postoffice authorities were persuaded also to adopt the new name. Thereafter the old but not very euphonic appellation disappears, save in history and memory of the inhabitants, and the village became known by its new and present designation.

In the World War the county played its part in a manner worthy of its heritage. Her sons to the number of nearly six hundred joined the military and naval forces and during that period the local Red Cross Chapters and other civilian organizations were active and efficient. The list of those Loudoun patriots who responded to their country's call at that time is too long and their services too varied to be fully recounted here; but no narrative, however greatly curtailed, should fail to name those who then laid down their lives for their country. A dignified monument, now standing in the grounds surrounding Loudoun's courthouse in Leesburg, bears these words in letters of bronze:

Memory also should be kept afresh of the names of eleven Loudoun men who between them, for their services in the war, received no less than nineteen American and foreign decorations: Colonel Arthur H. Carter, Captain Edward C. Fuller, Major William Hanson Gill, William R. Grimes, Samuel C. Hirst, First Lieutenant William P. Hulbert, First Lieutenant James F. Manning, Jr., Colonel Thomas Bentley Mott, Bryant Rust, Captain Edward H. Tebbs, Jr., and Lieutenant Colonel Harry Aubrey Toulmin. This list is incomplete; as given it is copied from the publications of the Virginia War History Commission, Source Volume I, 1923.

During the war, as Federal Food Administrator of Virginia, there also served Colonel Elijah B. White of Selma so effectively that among the recognitions of his work that he received was the Agricultural Order of Merit bestowed by the Republic of France.

In 1918, in the midst of the war, a new State Administration assumed the reins of government under the leadership of Westmoreland Davis of Loudoun who became Governor of Virginia in that year and whose administration was accepted by the people as efficient, sound and well balanced.

[231]In culture the county is recovering the position it proudly held one hundred years ago before ground down by war and poverty. Its public schools, then nonexistent, now under the supervision of Superintendent O. L. Emerick, grow and improve and are supplemented by several excellent private institutions of which Foxcroft, near Middleburg, has been described and the very successful Llangollan School for younger children, opened in 1937 near Leesburg by Mrs. Frances L. Patton (Miss Louise D. Harrison) also may be mentioned. Loudoun has produced a naval architect of international reputation in Lewis Nixon (1861- ), two well known artists in Hugh A. Breckenridge (1870-1937) and the late Lucian Powell and a number of writers upon her history whose works have been referred to frequently in the foregoing pages. Supplementing her schools and extending their educational work the county has two large libraries, the older founded in Leesburg in 1907 as the Leesburg Library largely through the efforts of the late Mrs. Levi P. Morton and her daughter, Loudoun's benefactress, Mrs. William C. Eustis of Oatlands. In the year 1918 the Thomas Balch Library was incorporated and at once, on land bought for that purpose through public subscription, the late Edwin Swift Balch and Thomas Willing Balch of Philadelphia, sons of Thomas Balch of international arbitration fame (who was born in Leesburg in 1821) began the construction for it of the beautiful library building on West Market Street, Leesburg, which so enhances the charm of the town. Mr. Waddy B. Wood, a Washington architect of recognized authority on the early Federal period of American architecture, drew the plans and in 1922 the building was completed and dedicated and the collection of books of the old Leesburg Library was presented and moved to the new institution. That collection, since then much enlarged, now numbers well over 10,000 volumes and is of a very definite value to town and county.[188]

There had been a small library at Purcellville for a number of years when in 1919 it was reorganized as the Blue Ridge Library and continued its activities until about 1926. There followed a period in which the library was closed. Then in 1934, largely through the leadership of Mrs. Clarence Robey, a Federal grant was obtained which, with about twice its amount in many smaller private subscriptions, made possible the completion in 1937 of the present imposing Purcellville Library building at a cost of nearly $30,000. It is rapidly augmenting its collection of books and to its primary function of library is adding that of civic centre, where lectures, concerts and other entertainments are frequently given and enthusiastically attended by the people of the neighbourhood. The new building is expected to be dedicated during the summer of 1938.

St. John's Roman Catholic Church, the first of its faith in Loudoun, was erected in Leesburg in 1878 and was dedicated on the 13th October of that year by the Right Rev. John J. Keane who was an orator of wide reputation and who later became the Archbishop of Dubuque. Among those most active in raising the necessary funds for its construction was Miss Lizzie C. Lee of Leesburg. Until 1894 mass was said but once a month by priests who came from Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. In the latter year it became a mission of St. James' Catholic Church at West Falls. Later, through the untiring efforts of Father A. J. Van Ingelgem, masses were said each Sunday. Father Van Ingelgem continued to guide the congregation and church until Father Govaert was appointed the first regular pastor in July, 1926. Soon thereafter the frame church was greatly enlarged and beautified, largely through the generosity of the late Mrs. Henry Harrison (Miss Anne Lee) of Leesburg, and was opened with services conducted by the Right Rev. Andrew J. Brennan of Richmond. At that same time the attractive rectory, adjoining the church, was also opened. The Leesburg parish of this church covers a territory of 2,000 square miles, extends from the West Virginia line to that of Maryland and operates two missions, one of which is at Herndon and the other at Purcellville. The Rev. Father John S.[233] Igoe, a native Virginian who enjoys the affectionate esteem of the whole community, is the present pastor.[189]

As throughout Virginia, hospitality is inherent in the people of Loudoun. Especially is this so at Christmas time when, from early days, the old English custom of stopping all farm work (save only necessitous care of the live stock) from Christmas Eve to the second day of January still obtains. Then scattered Loudoun folk seek to return, if but for a day, to their native soil bringing back with them friends and acquaintances that they may show their birthright; then open house prevails, time-honoured eggnogg and appletoddy greet all guests and the Leesburg Assembly, following its custom handed down through the generations, holds its eagerly awaited Christmas Ball.

With an unusually healthy climate the county is fortunate in the rarely efficient and devoted corps of physicians, both general practitioners and specialists, who faithfully guard the physical condition of its people. Of their number the Virginia State Medical Society has honored itself and Loudoun by electing as its President Dr. G. F. Simpson of Purcellville. And to the marked ability of her physicians is added the Loudoun Hospital, founded in 1912, first occupying a building on Market Street, Leesburg, and later erecting and in 1917 moving into the fine modern hospital building it now occupies. "To Mr. P. Howard Lightfoot's interest and untiring efforts" wrote the hospital's historian "is due the actual bringing together of those factors and conditions which developed into the Leesburg Hospital." Now called the Loudoun County Hospital, it has a large nurses' home, beautiful grounds, fruitful gardens and withal has so splendidly grasped its opportunities for service that it has become essential to the county's welfare. To the physicians of the county, many very generous contributors and to the selfless and untiring work of Loudoun's women may all this great success be ascribed. To add to this full measure, Mrs. Eustis supports in memory of her mother Mrs. Morton, a visiting nursing service in and around Leesburg[234] through which the kindly professional care of a registered nurse (now Mrs. Louise King) is at all times at the disposal of the people for cases of an emergency nature or those not needing continuous attention, entirely without cost to the patient, irrespective of the desire and ability of its beneficiaries to pay therefor.[190]

In this all too brief summary of her present day institutions at least a word should be said of the county's banks. The Peoples National Bank, the Loudoun National Bank, both in Leesburg; the Middleburg National Bank, the Purcellville National Bank, the Hamilton National Bank and the Round Hill National Bank, each in its community, serves the local interest and all unite in this enviable record: that not one bank in the County failed during the great financial depression of recent and unhappy memory.

The exceptionally healthy climate, the rich and well watered lands of Loudoun, together with the fine sport for horse lovers carried on through its long hunting season, have proved a potent magnet to draw new residents to the county. Country homes are constantly being created or restored and surrounding farms are, for the most part, self-sustaining and well handled. With Virginia's assumption of the rôle of a leader in good roads, the old reproach of impassable highways has vanished.

And Loudoun is proud of her people. It is an American community, its roots very deep in soil and tradition. It believes that it occupies that part of the Commonwealth and Nation most conducive to a sane and healthy life. Its sons and daughters sometimes, in following the beckoning finger of fortune, wander far afield; but are prone to return equally convinced with those who seldom leave the county that all in all no better homeland anywhere can be found—devoutly believing that though God might have made a fairer land, yet remaining strong in their reasonable conviction that God never did.

INDEX

Abel, George, 223

Acquia Creek, 20

Adams, Francis, 127

Adams, George, 70

Adams, John, Pres't, 157

Adams, John Q., Pres't, 191, 193

Adams, Matthew, 167

Adams, Nathaniel, 126

Akernatatzy, 9

Alden, John, 42

Anderson, John, 79

Aldie, Battle of, 216

Aldie Castle, 167, 177

Aldie Manor, 177

Aldie Town, 62, 105, 167, 193, 214, 216, 217, 220

Aldridge, J. West, 216

Alexander, Ann, 160

Alexander, John, 127, 160

Alexander, John H., 203, 215

Alexander, John R. H., Judge and Mrs., x, 170, 216, 228

Alexandria, Christ Church, 119

Alexandria City, 86, 106, 119, 133, 166, 194

Alexandria, Loudoun and Hamp. R. R., 195, 229

Alexandria Pike, 21, 64, 66, 68, 74, 88, 90, 205

Alleghany River, 83

Algonquins, 2, 4, 16, 18, 20

Allen, Rev., 164

Alsop (Quoted), 15

Amidas, Philip, 10

Ameroleck, 7, 8

Anacostans, 20

Ancram, George, 131

Andrè, Major, 143 et seq.

Andrews, John, Rev., 72, 91

Anne, Queen, 45

Antietam Battle, 211

Appomattox, 221

Apprentices, 185, 186, 187

Arlington, Earl of, 14

Armand, Charles, 136

Armand's Legion, 136

Arnold, Benedict, 142 et seq.

Asbury, George, 127

Ashby's Gap, 39, 70, 99, 168, 218

Aubrey, Elizabeth, 42

Aubrey, Francis, 38, 39, 40, 42, 62, 72, 74, 120, 169, 173

Aubrey, Thomas, 120

Aubrey's Ferry, 120, 121

Austen, W., 186

Awsley, Henry, 125

Awsley, Poins, 125

Awsley, Thomas, 125

Bacon, Nathaniel, 16, 18

Bacon's Rebellion, 9, 15, 18

Bagley, John, 128

Bagnall, Anthony, 5

Baker, Col., 206

Balch, Edwin S., 231

Balch, L. P. W., 186

Balch, Thomas, 231

Balch, Thomas, Library, vii, ix, 231

Balch, Thomas W., 231

Ball, Burgess, Col., 168, 176, 182

Ball, Charles A., 229

Ball, Esther, 80

Ball, Fayette, 191, 196

Ball, George W., Capt., 170

Ball, James, 169

Ball, Mary, 38, 80

Ball, Samuel, 223

Ball, Sarah, 38

Ball, William, Col., 80, 168

Ball's Bluff, Battle of, 204

Baltimore, Lord, 43

Baltimore and Ohio R. R. Co., 194, 215

Bank of County, xii, 183, 203, 234

Baptists, 78 etc., 114

Barber, John, 81

Barksdale, Wm., Col., 204

Barlow, Arthur, 10

Bassell, John Y., 202

Bayley, Joseph, 125

Beard, Joseph, 184, 187

Beatty, Russell T., 229

Beatty, Thos., 127

Beaty, David, 128

Beaver, 2, 18

Beaver Dam, 70

Beavers, James, 126

Bell, John B., 187

Belle Air, 118

Belmont, 36, 171, 180, 193

Belmont Chapel, 171

Belvoir, viii, 73

Benham, Samuel, 125

Benham, Peter, 126

Bennett, Chas., 127

Bentley family, 172

Bentley, R. M., 223

Benton, Wm., 173, 174, 178

Berkeley, John, Sir, 12, 13

Berkeley, William, Sir, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

Berkeley, William N., 207

Berry, Withers, 128

Beauregard, Gen'l, 204

Beverley, Robert, 32, 55, 57

Big Spring, 38, 62, 63, 169, 211

Binns, Charles 102, 104, 159

Binns, Charles, Jr., 102, 128, 160, 164

Binns, John A., ix, 128, 159, et seq.

Bishop family, 82

Bladensburg, 179, 190

Blincoe, Sampson, 184

Bloomfield, 215, 228

Bloomfield Road, 220

Bluemont (see Snickersville), 70, 167, 229

Blue Ridge, 1, 29, 37, 39, 46, 49, 66, 72, 73, 79, 83, 92, 95, 115, 168, 214, 218
[236]
Blue Ridge Library, 232

Bohannan, A., Capt., 140

Booker, 131

Booram, Wm., 125

Boston, 124

Botts, Joshua, 126

Boundaries, 1, 23, 26, 65, 69, 159, 166

Boyne, Battle of, 52, 57

Braddock, Edward, Gen'l, 86

Braddock's Army, xi, 66, 86, 87

Braden, Robert, 157

Bradfield, Capt., 191

Brair, James, 125

Brady, E. B., Dr., 168

Breckenridge, Hugh A., 231

Brennan, Andrew J., Bishop, 232

Brent, Giles, 20

Brent Town, 53, 60

Bridges, 68

Broad Run, 38, 66, 69, 70

Broad Run Bridge, 66, 68

Broad Run Church (Baptist), 79

Bronaugh, William, 166

Brown, Mrs. (Journalist), 90

Brown, John's raid, 197

Brown, Stanley M., Mr. and Mrs., 176

Brown, William, 159

Brown's Crossing, 215

Buffalo, 1, 65

Bull Run, 39, 67, 99, 166, 204

Bull Run Battle (See Manassas), 29

Bull Run Mountains, 1, 214, 217, 219

Burgess, Chas., Col., 80, 81

Burkley, Scarlet, 126

Burnaby, Archdeacon, 228

Burns, Ignatius, 127

Burson, Aaron, 187

Butcher, Sam'l, 126

Butler, Joseph, 127, 128

Butler, Sam'l, 125

Caldwell, S. B. T., 188

Cameron, Barony, 34, 72

Cameron, Captain, 154

Cameron, Glebe, 116

Cameron Parish, 40, 72, 97, 114, 166

Campbell, Aeneas, 77, 96, 102, 103, 110, 170

Campbell County, 200

Campbell, John, Earl of Loudoun, x. (See Loudoun.)

Canals, 194, 195

Canavest. (See Conoy.)

Cardell, Presley, 184

Carlheim, 226, 227

Carnan, Wm., 126

Carnes, Capt., 146

Carney, John, 186

Carolina Road, 38, 42, 49, 60, 67, 105, 106, 120, 121, 172, 176, 178, 228

Carpetbaggers, 225, 226

Carr, Peter, 165

Carr, Sam'l, 184

Carrington, Timothy, 168

Carroll, Charles, 43

Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, 43

Carter, Arthur H., Col., 230

Carter, Charles, 67

Carter, D., 187

Carter family, 35, 100

Carter, Francis M., 223

Carter, George of Eglesfeld, x

Carter, George of Oatlands, 36, 172, 185

Carter, John A., 197, 198

Carter, John R., Capt., 207

Carter, Robert, Councillor, 172

Carter, Robert, "King," 34, 35, 53, 67, 172

Carter, Robin, 67

Carter, Shirley, Dr. and Mrs., 177, 202

Carter's Mill, 166

Carthagena, 30, 59

Catawbas, 63, 64

Catoctin Church, 79

Catoctin Furnace Co., 195

Catoctin Hills, 1, 32, 46, 49, 65, 71, 73, 162, 201

Catoctin Run, 47, 69, 70, 73, 195

Caton, Jacob, 127

Cattle, 228

Cattle thieves, 61

Cavaliers, 12, 13, 18

Cavan, P., 131, 132

Cavan vs. Murray, 107

Cedar Creek, 218

Celden, W. C., 182

Centreville, 217

Champ, John, Sgt. Major, 142, et seq.

Champ, John, Mrs., 155, 156

Champ, Nathaniel, 157

Champ, William, 158

Champ's Spring, 157

Chancellor, Ashby, Mrs., x

Chapawamsic, Baptists, 80

Chapel above Goose Creek, 39, 62, 169

Charles I, 11, 51

Charles II, 12, 13, 14, 17

Cherokees, 2

Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, 194

Chesapeake Bay, 5

Cheat Mountain, 176

Chestnut Hill, 74, 175

Chicheley, Henry, Sir, 17

Chichester, Arthur M., Sr., Capt., 202

Chichester, Arthur M., Jr., Mrs., 234

Chichester, George M., Capt., 191, 196

Chinn family, 142

Chinn, Joseph, 81, 166

Chinn, Raleigh, I, 80, 81

Chinn, Raleigh, II, 82

Chinn, Thomas, 81, 125

Christmas, 233

Churches, Christ at Lucketts, 62, 164

Churches, (See separate names or locations.)

Church Disestablishment, 159, 196
[237]
Civil War, viii, 50, 170, 176, 195, 197, etc.

Claggett, Henry, Dr., 196

Claggett, H. O., Capt., 202

Clapham family, 74, 142

Clapham, Josias, Sr., 74

Clapham, Josias, Jr., Col., 74, 96, 102, 112, 121, 122, 126, 134, 136, 138, 141, 166, 175, 179

Clapham, Josias, Jr., Mrs., 134

Clapham, Samuel, 74, 175, 184

Clapham's Ferry, 121

Clapper, J., Dr., 186

Clark's Gap, 65

Clayton, Amos, 168

Clergy, Established Church, 130

Cleveland, James, 127

Clifford, Obadiah, 165

Climate, 1

Clinton, Henry, Sir., 143, et seq.

Clyburn, Charles E., 229

Clover, 160, 162, 229

Cochran, Chas F., 107

Cochran, James, 168

Cocke, Catesby, 47, 70, 72

Cocke, William, Dr., 71

Cockerell, Capt., 192

Cole, Josiah, 49

Colechester Road, 65, 67

Coleman, James, 105, 127

Coleman, Richard, 89, 91, 102

Colepeper, 1st Lord, 12

Colepeper, 2nd Lord, 14, 17, 32

Colepeper, Alexander, 17, 33

Colepeper, Catharine, Lady Fairfax, 32, 34

Colepeper, Margaret, Lady, 32, 33

Colepeper, Thomas, 12

Colvil, Thomas, 40, 73

Colvin, John, 71, 72, 73

Colvin, John B., 160

Combs, Joseph, 125

Combs, Robert, 125

Combs, Stephen, 125

Committee of Correspondence, 125

Committee of Safety, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 139

Compher, John, 223

Confederate sentiment, 201

Conklin, Thubert H., 229

Conoy Island, 21, et seq., 24, 25, 26, 65

Conrad, 186

Conrad, Daniel P., 187

Conrad family, 210

Conrad's Ferry, 210

Conrod, Edward, 167

Conscription, 88

Conservation Commission, vii

Conservative Party, 225

Convicts, 44, 56, 138, 139

Cook, William, 167

Cooper, Alexander, 133

Cooper, Appollos, 125

Cooper, Neally M., 134

Copeland, Richard, 167

Copper, 67, 73

Corn, 53, 54, 162, 229

Cornelison, John, 127

Cornwallis, Lord, 30, 153

Cost, Thos. J., 223

Coton, 35, 36, 171

Country homes, vii, 168, 234

County Clerk's Office, 184

County Officers, First, 102, etc.

County records, 200, 223

Courthouse, First, 108

Courthouse Church services, 164

Courtald, S. A., 90

Covenanters, 51

Cox, Samuel, 126

Craighill, G. P., Rev., x

Cresswell, Joseph, x

Cresswell, Nicholas, xii, 74, 77, 128, et seq., 136, 164

Cromwell, Oliver, 13, 34, 57

Cromwell, Richard, 13

Crooked Billet, 134

Crown Point, 85

Cub Run, 70

Culpeper. (See Colepeper.)

Culture, 185

Cumberland, Duke of, 85

Cumberland, Maryland, 84

Curtin, Mathew, 229

Custer, Gen'l, 215

Dairy Cattle, 228

Darnes, Leonard, 229

Davis, James, 126

Davis, John, Capt., 140

Davis, Richard T., Rev. Dr., 226, 227

Davis, Westmoreland, Governor, 177, 230

Davis, William, Col., 140

Dawson, Franklin L., 230

Debell, John, 127

Debell, William, 127

DeButts, Lawrence, Rev., 39

Deck, Patrick A., viii, 212

Declaration of Independence, 43, 133, 172, 180

Deer, 2

Dehaven, Abraham, 128

Dehaven, Isaac, 128

Delancey, Governor of New York, 86

Delawares, 64

Democrats, 182, 188, 226

Derry, John P., 223

Deserters, 212

Detroit, 157, 158

Deven, Gen'l, 221

Devens, Col., 206

Difficult Run, 40, 68, 69, 72, 73, 87, 97, 98, 115

Dinker, John, 126

Dinosaurs, 178
[238]
Dinwiddie, Governor, 83, 84, 86

Disfranchisement, 222

Diskin, Daniel, 70

Distilleries, 89, 186

Dixon, Joseph, 77, 170

Dizerega family, 179

Doctors, 186

Dodd, John, 126

Doeg, 9, 16

Dogi, 9

Dongan, Governor, 18

Dorman, George, 138

Douglas, Earl of, 77

Douglas, George H., 27

Douglass, Hugh, 77, 126, 127, 128

Douglass, William, 77, 131, 134

Downey, Wm. B., 223

Drake, Jonathan, 125

Drake, Thomas, 125

Dranesville, 204

Drish, W., 187

Drunkenness, 131

Dry Mill Road, 65

Ducking-spring, 102, 211

Ducks, Wild, 26, 130

Dudley, Thos., 82

Duelling, 190

Duffy, A. N., Col., 217

Duffy, Capt., 205

Dulaney, Benj., 159

Dunbar, Col., 86

Dunn, Rev., 196

Dutch, 15, 60

Eagle Tavern, 186

Early, Gen'l, 218

East India Co., 104

Edwards, Samuel W., 186

Edwards, Thomas W., Mr. and Mrs., xii

Edwards Ferry, 205

Elgin, Francis, Jr., 127

Elgin, Gustavus, 126, 128

Elizabeth, Queen, 10, 11, 51

Elk Lick, 67

Elk Marsh, 53

Elliott, William, 126

Ellzey, Catharine, 175

Ellzey family, 25, 40, 142

Ellzey, William, 104, 125, 159, 175, 179

Ely's Corner, 65

Emerick, Oscar L., x, xii, 231

Enfranchisement of Confederates, 226

English Board of Agriculture, 161

Episcopal Theological Seminary Library, 117

Eskridge, Chas. G., 126

Eskridge, George, 72

Eustis, William C., Mr. and Mrs., 172, 231, 233

Evans, Nathaniel G., Gen'l, 204, et seq.

Evans, Thomas, 42

Exeter, 176, 204

Fairfax, Calharme, Lady, 32, 34

Fairfax Family, Sketch, 33

Fairfax, Ferdinando, 2nd Lord, 34

Fairfax, 5th Lord, 33, 34

Fairfax, George W., 67, 73

Fairfax, Henry, Col., 178

Fairfax, John M., Col., 178, 202

Fairfax, Richard, 33

Fairfax, Thomas, 1st Lord, 33

Fairfax, Thomas, 3rd Lord, 34

Fairfax, Thomas, 6th Lord, 18, 33, 35, 107, 122, 228

Fairfax, William, 35, 72, 73

Fairfax County, 40, 69, 71, 87, 89, 96, 97, 102, 113, 159, 166, 207

Fairfax County Court, 69, 113

Fairfax Courthouse, 67, 89

Fairfax, Glebe, 196

Fairfax Meeting, 78

Falkner, 91

Farnesworth, Henry, 126

Fauna, 1, 2

Fauntleroy, Chas. M., Col., 202

Fauquier County, 99, 207, 220

Featherstone, W. S., Col., 204

Federalists, 179, 188

Fendall, Arthur, Mrs., 175

Fendall, Thomas M., x, 25, 190

Fendall, Thomas M., Mrs., 25

Fenton, Enoch, 223

Ferries, 68, 120, et seq., 168

Ferries, Clapham's, 121

Ferries, Edwards, 205

Ferries, Noland's, 113, 120, et seq., 131, 139, 140, 217

Ferries, Point of Rocks, 120

Ferries, Snickers, 168

Ferries, Vestal's, 66

Fevers, 163

Finnekin, William, 125

First Colony, 11

Fitzhugh, William, 169

Flat Spring, 74

Flemming, John, 230

Foley, Mr., 186

Forbas, John, 139

Forbes, Gen'l, 94

Fords, 68, 210

Forests, 1, 154

Forests Burned, 6, 9, 13

Forsyth, Jas. W., Lieut. Col., 219

Fort Beauregard, 204

Fort Cumberland, 93

Fort Du Quesne, xi, 85, 86, 93, 100

Fort Evans, 204, 205

Fort Johnston, 204

Fort Necessity, 66, 84, 85

Fort Niagara, 85

Fort Ontario, 100
[239]
Fort Oswego, 100

Foundling, John, 167

Fox, George, 48

Fox, George K., Jr., 200, 223 et seq.

Foxcroft, xii, 172, 228, 231

Foxes, 2

Fox-hunting, 59, 227, 228

Franklin, B. W., 108

Frasier, Herod, 223

Frederick, 160

Freedman's Bureau, 225

French, Mr., 40

French and Indian War, 72, 83

French and Indians, 46

Fruitland, 88, 89, 91, 107

Fulford, John, Major, 103

Fuller, Edward C., Capt., 230

Furr, Enoch, 128

Furr, Fenton, 223

Fry, Joshua, Col., 66, 84

Fry, Major, 90

Fry-Jefferson Map, 66

Frying Pan Run, 67

Gage, Lieut. Col., 86

Garalland, 77, 131

Garden Club of Virginia, vii

Garver, Henry, 223

Gates, General, 143

Geese, Wild, 26, 130

"Genius of Liberty," 183, 188

George II, King, 107

George III, King, xi

George, Wallace, 204

George, William, 128

Georgetown, D. C., 66, 180

Georgetown, Virginia, 68, 106

German Reformed Church, 80

German Settlement, 46, 80

Germans, 45, 72, 80, 114, 135, 159, 166, 185, 201, 223

Gerrard, John, Rev., 79

Gettysburg, Battle of, 207, 216, 218

Gibbs, James L., 128

Gibson, Capt., 211

Gibson, David, 167

Gibson, Harry P., Dr., 216

Gibson, Henry C., 216

Gibson, John A., Dr., 216

Giddings family, 104

Giddings, William, Col., 201

Gilbert, Ernest, 230

Gilbert, Humphrey, Sir, 10

Gilbert, Silas, 128

Gill, Wm. H., Major, 230

Gold, 13

Goodhart, Briscoe, ix, 139, 201, 209

Gore (Coachman), 92

Gore, Coleman, Mr. and Mrs., 175

Goose Creek, 1, 25, 37, 62, 63, 69, 70, 80, 112, 141

Goose Creek and Little River Navigation Company, 195

Goose Creek Meeting, 78

Gough, Gilbert H., 230

Gouveneur, Mrs., 178

Govaert, Rev. Fr., 232

Graffenreid, Christopher, Baron de, 25

Graham, Margaret, 120

Grant of 1649, 12

Grant of 1669, 14, 15

Grant of 1673, 14, 15

Grant, Isaac, 126

Grant, Jasper, 126

Grant, U. S., Gen'l, 218

Grass, 1, 229

Gray, Grover C., 230

Gray, John, 184

Gray, William H., 223

Graydey, James, 125

Grayson, Alex., Capt., 207

Grayson, Benjamin, 71, 72, 118

Grayson, Spence, Rev., 118

Grayson, William, Col., 71, 118, 135

Great Hunting Creek, 73

Great Meadows, 85

Great Spring. (See Big Spring.)

Green, Charles, Rev. Dr., 40, 118

Green, Colonel, 135

Green, Nathaniel, Gen'l, 154

Greenback raid, 215

Greenway, 63, 203

Gregory's Gap, 73

Griffin, Walter's Rolling Road, 67

Griffith, David, Rev. Dr., 118, 132

Griggs, G. M., Gen'l, 216

Grimes, William R., 230

Grubb, John, 223

Guerillas, 219

Gun factory, 136

Gunn, John, 139

Gypsum. See Plaster(land)

Habeas Corpus in Virginia, 27

Hague, Francis, 112

Hale, Horatio, x

Halkett, James, 94

Halkett, Peter, Sir., xi, 66, 86, 87, 92, etc.

Halkett, Peter, Sir, (Jr.), 95

Halifax, 101

Hall, James, Rev. Dr., 165

Hall, Wilbur C., vii, x

Hall, William, Jr., 70

Hamilton, James, 96, 102, 104, 109, 112, 113

Hamilton Parish, 39

Hamilton Town, 168, 212

Hammerley, Nellie, Miss, x

Hampton, Anthony, 69

Hancock, John, 133

Hancock, Lina, 125

Hanson, Richard, 125

Harding, John I., 184
[240]
Hardy, Leonard H., 230

Harper, Capt., 61

Harper, John, 159

Harper's Ferry, xi, 73, 197, 207, 232

Harris, H. B., 204

Harrison, Burr, 21, 24, 65

Harrison, Burr (2nd), 173

Harrison, Burr W., 186, 212

Harrison, Catharine, Mrs., 175

Harrison, Charles F., x, 212

Harrison, Cuthbert, 25

Harrison, Fairfax, viii, ix, 12, 67, 72

Harrison, Harry T., 184

Harrison, Henry, Mrs., 232

Harrison, Henry T., 210

Harrison, John Peyton, 125, 166

Harrison, Lalla, Miss (Mrs. White), 177

Harrison, Louise D., Miss (Patton), 231

Harrison, Mathew, 25, 175

Harrison, Rebecca, Miss, vii

Harte, John, 69

Hassininga, 6

Hawling, William, 69

Haxall, Bolling W., Major, 230

Hazen, E., 185

Head, James W., viii, 13, 32, 123, 126, 213

Heale, William, 166

Helm, L. C., 202

Heaton, Henry, ix, 212

Heaton, Nathaniel, Capt., 207

Henderson, Richard H., 184, 186, 191

Henderson, Samuel, 125

Henry, Capt., 192

Henry, John, 126

Henry, Patrick, 129

Hepburn, Thos., 167

Hessian Fly, 163

Hessian Prisoners, 139

Hews, Edward, 70

Hexon, James, 167

Highwaymen, 61

Highways, vii, 60, et seq.

Hill, Lysander, Judge, 224

Hillsborough, 65, 167, 186

Hinds, David, 138

Hirst, Richard, 126

Hirst, Samuel C., 230

Hixon, Timothy, 128

Hoban, James, 178

Hoboken, 153

Hoffman family, 170

Hoge, Ei J., 123

Hogs, 120, 228

Holmes, John, Rev., 40

Holmes, Oliver W., Justice, 206

Hopkins, David, 127

Hopkins, John G., 171

Hopton, Ralph, Lord, 12

Horses, 59, 184, 227, 228

Horse Racing, 184

Horse Shows, 227, 228

Horse thieves, 61, 212

Hough, Emerson, 82

Hough, Frank, Lieut., 229

Hough, John, 82, 107, 113, 159, 167

Hough, Joseph, 128

Hough, Mahlon, 167

Hough, Robert H., 187

Hough, Thomas, 167

Hough, William, 166

Hough's Tavern, 186

Hourihane, John T., 233

Howard of Effingham, Lord, 18, 28

Howe, Lord, 129, 154

Huchison, Andrew, 106

Huchison, Daniel, 106

Huchison family, 106

Huchison, J. R., Capt., 202

Huchison, John, 106

Huchison, William, 127, 128

Hugh, John, 112

Hull, Samuel, 40, 42

Hull's Army, 157

Humphrey, 186

Humphrey, Alexander P., 229

Humphrey, Benj. I., 125

Humphreys, John, 184

Humphries, Capt., 192

Hulbert, Wm. P., Lieut., 230

Hunting Creek, 65

Hunton, Eppa, Gen'l, 204, 206, 207, 209, 224

Hurley, Patrick J., Col. and Mrs., 171

Igoe, John S., Rev., 233

Indentured servants, 53, 88

Indians, 1, 12, 15, 18, 20, 85, 89, 99

Indian Mounds, 63

Indian Tribes, Akernatatzy, 9

Indian Tribes, Algonquins, 2, 3, 4, 16, 18, 20

Indian Tribes, Anacostans, 20

Indian Tribes, Catawbas, 63

Indian Tribes, Cherokees, 2

Indian Tribes, Delawares, 64

Indian Tribes, Doegs, 9, 16

Indian Tribes, Dogi, 9

Indian Tribes, Hassininga, 6, 7

Indian Tribes, Iroquois, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 15, 16, 18, 20, 24, 60

Indian Tribes, Mahocs, 9

Indian Tribes, Managogs, 9

Indian Tribes, Manahoacks, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 15, 18, 32, 60

Indian Tribes, Mangoacks, 9

Indian Tribes, Massawomecks (See Iroquois)

Indian Tribes, Monacans, 6, 8, 9

Indian Tribes, Nacothtanks, 20

Indian Tribes, Nahyssans, 9

Indian Tribes, Nantaughtacunds, 6

Indian Tribes, Nanticokes, 9

Indian Tribes, Nottoways, 2
[241]
Indian Tribes, Nuntaneuck, 9

Indian Tribes, Nuntally, 9

Indian Tribes, Piscataways, 20, 21

Indian Tribes, Potomacs, 7

Indian Tribes, Powhatans, 3, 6

Indian Tribes, Sapon, 9

Indian Tribes, Senecas, 16, 21, 24

Indian Tribes, Shakahonea, 6

Indian Tribes, Sioux, 3

Indian Tribes, Stegarake, 4

Indian Tribes, Stegora, 6

Indian Tribes, Susquehannocks, 2, 9, 15, 16, 18, 20, 24, 28, 60

Indian Tribes, Tacci, 9

Indian Tribes, Tauxuntania, 6

Indian Tribes, Tuskaroras, 2

Innes, James, Col., 86

Intermarriage, 37

Irish, 43, 114, 138

Iroquois, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 15, 16, 18, 20, 24, 60

Iselin, Oliver, 82

Jackson, Andrew, Gen'l, xi, 189

Jackson, Level, 70

Jackson, Stonewall, Gen'l, 210

Jail, County, 102, 110

James I, 11, 51

James II, 44, 58

James River, 12

Janney, Amos, 47, 69

Janney, Charles P., 223, 224

Janney, Hannah, Mrs., 78

Janney, Jacob, 78

Janney, John, xii, 167, 197, 198, 226

Janney, Joseph, 132, 159, 223

Janney, Lilias, Miss, x

Janney, Mahlon, 166

Janney, Samuel, 167

Janney, Stephen, 168

Jefferson, Thomas, President, 129, 133, 161, et seq., 178

Jeffries, Herbert, Sir, 17

Jenifer, W. H., Col., 204, 205

Jenings, Edmund, 34

Jermyn, Lord, 12, 13

Johnson, Bradley T., Col., 208

Johnson, George, 126, 131

Johnson, Joseph, 39, 42

Johnson, Rebecca, 120

Johnson, Robert, 126

Johnson, W., 131

Johnson, William, Col., 86

Johnson, Valentine B., 230

Johnston, Frances B., Miss, xii

Johnston, Joseph E., Gen'l, 204

Jones, Rev., 118

Jones, James G., 187

Jones, John, Jr., 127

Jones, William E., Gen'l, 208

Jumonville, 85

Keane, John J., Bishop, 232

Keith, Donald, 139

Keith, James, 104

Kelly, William, 139

Kendrick, John, 125

Kennan, Thos., 128

Kentucky, 81, 157, 159

Kercheval, Sam'l, 137

Ketocton. (See Catoctin.)

Key's, Gap, 66

Key's Gap Ferry, 88, 90

Keys, Gersham, 66

Key's plantation, 92

Kile (See Kyle), John, 173, 174

Kile, John, Jr., 173, 174

Kilgour, George, 127

Kilpatrick, Hugh J., Gen'l, 211, 216, 217

King George County, 99

King, Louise, Mrs., 234

King, Smith, 128

King, Thomas, 126, 128

King, William, 186

Kirk, Mr., 130, 131

Krebs, Henry, 185

Kyle family, 173. (See Kile)

Labour supplies, 54

Lacey, Israel, 167

Lacey's Ordinary, (See West's)

Lafayette, de Marquis, 140, 171, 178, 191, et seq.

Lancaster County, 99

Lancaster, T. A., Jr., 170

Lane, Hardage, 126

Lane, James, 126

Lasswell, Jacob, 70

Lasswell, John, 69

Lawrence, Mrs., 192

Lawyers, 186

Lederer, John, 8

Lee, Alexander L., 223

Lee, Anne, Miss, 232

Lee family, 35, 100, 142

Lee, Fitzhugh, Gen'l, 216

Lee, Francis Lightfoot, 104, 110, 112, 129, 133

Lee, Henry, Gen'l, ix, 142

Lee, Lawrence R., 204

Lee, Lizzie A., Miss, 232

Lee, Ludwell, 36, 171, 180, 193

Lee, Philip Ludwell, 111

Lee, Richard Bland, 166

Lee, Richard Henry, 71, 171

Lee, Robert E., Gen'l, 142, 170, 176, 208, 210, 214, 216, 218

Lee, Thomas, 34, 35, 42, 104

Lee, Thomas Ludwell, 36, 171

Lee-Jackson Highway, 62, 228

[242]Leesburg, vii, 62, 65, 68, 75, 105, 107, 111 et seq., 119, 129, 134, 140, 141, 164, 165, 172, 179, 180, 190, 191 et seq., 195, 198, 203, 205, 206, 211, 228, 232

Leesburg Academy, 184, 192

Leesburg Assembly, 233

Leesburg, Battle of, 211

Leesburg Industries, 186

Leesburg Institute, 193

Leesburg, King Street, 62, 113

Leesburg Library, 231

Leesburg, Loudoun Street, 65, 75

Leesburg, nursing service, 233

Leesburg, pavements, 183

Leesburg, Postmasters, 179

Leesburg Railroad Company, 195

Leesburg, stockade, 112

Leesburg, taverns, 43

Leesburg, and Snickers Gap Turnpike Co., 66

Leslie, Thomas, 167

Letcher, Governor, 207

Lewis, Betty, Mrs., 172

Lewis, Daniel, 126

Lewis, Thomas, 126, 179

Liberia, 194

Library of Congress, ix, x, xii, 90, 101, 108, 161, 182, 183

Lightfoot, P. Howard, 233

Little River, 67, 69, 70

Little River Turnpike, 62, 67, 167, 216

Little Rocky Run, 67

Littlejohn, Rev., 180

Littleton, Frank C., Mr. and Mrs., x, xi, 178, 179

Littleton, Frank C., Jr., 179

Littleton, John, 128

Limestone Run, 69, 75, 77, 169

Lincoln, Town of, 168

Linden, 214

Lintner, J. Ross, x

Linton, John, 127

Lipscomb, Wm. H., Mr. and Mrs., 171

Llangollan, 174

Llangollan Races, 175, 228

Llangollan School, 231

Log houses, 31, 185

London Company, 11

London Magazine, xi

Loomis, John T., x

Lotteries, 183

Loudermilk & Company, viii

Loudoun County Hospital, 233

Loudoun, Earl of, x, 77, 100

Loudoun Hunt, 171, 228

Loudoun, Mirror, 183

Loudoun, Railroad Company, 77

Loudoun, Rangers, 202, 209

Loudoun, System, 163

Loudoun, Valley, 49

Louis Philippe, 170

Louisburg, 101

Love, Sam, 138

Lovettsville, Town, 168, 221

Loyalists, 138

Loyd, John, 79

Luckett, Sam'l C., 223

Lucketts, 62

Luttrell, Thos., 125

Lutz, Francis A., 170

Lutz, Samuel S., Mrs., 170

Lynn, B. W., Lieut., 202

Lynsville Creek, 79

MacCormack, John, 165

Madison, Dolly, Mrs., 180

Madison, James, President, 179, 180

Maffet, Josias, 127

Magisterial Districts, 69

Mahoc, 9

Managog, 9

Manahoacks, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 15, 18, 32, 60, 174

Manassas, Battle, 204

Manassas Gap R. R. Co., 218

Mangoack, 9

Mankin, Chas. L., 223

Manning, James F., Jr., 230

Manors, 36

Mansions, County, Erection of, 159 et seq.

Maps, Emerick, x

Maps, Fry and Jefferson, 66

Maps, Graffenreid, 25

Maps, Leesburg, First, 107

Maps, Taylor, viii

Marks, John, 79

Marks, Thomas, 127

Marshall, John, Ch. J., 81, 174

Marshall, Thomas, Col., 81

Marshall, Town of, 214

Martin, Jacob, 186

Martin, Lawrence, Col., 108

Martin, W. H., Mr. and Mrs., 63

Martz, Robert, 229

Maryland boundary, 26

Maryland, Invasion of, 210, 216

Mason, Abraham B. T., 169

Mason, Ann Thomson, Mrs., 74, 75, 76, 77, 177

Mason, Armistead T., Gen'l, 170, 177, 179, 188 et seq.

Mason, Armistead T., Mrs., 190

Mason family, 75, 76, 142

Mason, George, 126, 188

Mason, George III, 75

Mason, George IV, of Gunston, 75, 188

Mason, John, Mrs., x

Mason, Mary, 75

Mason, Stevens T., 169, 170, 177, 179

Mason, Thomas F., 174, 175

Mason, Thomson, 74, 75, 76, 77, 129, 132, 133, 135, 136, 169, 170, 176

Mason, Thomson S., 76, 103, 111, 125

Mason, William T., 128

Mason, W. T. T., 193
[243]
Mason-McCarty Duel, 38, 177, 183, 188 et seq.

Massawomecks. (See Iroquois)

Massey, Lee, 104

Mathews, Governor, 13

Mathews, Thos., 131, 132

Matthews, Richard, 167

May, Jonathan C., 187

Mayfield, 170

McArdell, P., xi

McCabe, Capt., 131

McCabe, Mrs., 185

McCall, Gen'l, 205

McCarty, Daniel, 37, 44, 188

McCarty, Dennis, Col., 38

McCarty family, 37

McCarty, John M., Col., 170, 177, 188 et seq.

McCarty, William M., 192

McCarty-Mason Duel, 38, 177, 183 et seq.

McClain, Robt., 126

McClellan, Geo. B., Gen'l, 204

McClellan, H. B., 217

McClellan, William, 126, 128

McCormick, Helen, Miss, 192

McGeath, John, 127

McGeath, William, 127

McGolerick, Judge, 229

McGuinn, John O., 229

McIntosh, Alex., 139

McIntyre, Patrick, 182

McKay, Hugh, 139

McLeod, Dan'l, 139

McLeod, John, 139

McLeod, John, Jr., 139

McLlaney, James, 127, 128

McVicker, John, 125

Mead family, 64

Mead, Bishop, 196

Meade, Gen'l, 218

Means, Sam'l C., Capt., 202

Mercer, Chas. F., 167, 177, 184, 193

Mercer family, 142, 167

Mercer, James, 194

Mercer, John, 72, 194

Mercer, John F., Gov'r, 171

Mercer, Margaret, Miss, 171

Mercer, William F., 223

Merritt, Gen'l, 218, 219

Metcalf, Joseph, 79

Methodists, 130, 164, 165

Methuen, Paul, 28

Metzger, W. A., Justice, viii

Middleburg, 81, 166, 172, 173, 216, 220, 227, 228

Middleburg, Battle of, 216, 217

Middleburg Hunt, xi, 174, 216, 228

Middleton, Cornet, 147

Middleton, John, 70

Miles, Josiah, 126

Milhollen, Hirst, x

Military Organizations, Civil War, 201 et seq.

Military Organizations, Colonial Rangers, 23

Military Organizations, French and Indian War, 84, 86

Military Organizations, Revolution, 126, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 141, etc., 169

Military Organizations, War of 1812, 157, 179, 194

Military Organizations, World War, 229

Militia, 123, 132 etc., 201 et seq.

Mill Creek, 79

Millan, Thos., 127

Miller, Edward, 125

Miller, John, 126

Miller, Thomas, Dr., 175

Miller, Virginia, Miss, 175

Mills, Samuel, 125

Milstead, Harry, 229

Mines, John, Rev., 165

Mines, John K., 186

Minor, Nicholas, 89, 95, 96, 102, 107, 108, 109, 112, 127

Minor, Thomas, 127

Mix, Lewis & Co., 186

Moffet, Mr., 130

Mohascahod, 6

Monacans, 6, 8, 9

Monakin, 9

Moncure, John, Rev., 76

Monguagon, Battle of, 158

Monocacy, 43, 62, 210, 218

Monongahela River, 83

Monroe, James, Pres't, x, 178, 179 191 et seq., 193

Monroe, Susan, 118

Monroe Doctrine, 178

Monroe Highway, 134

Morton, John, 125

Morton, Levi P., Mrs., 231, 233

Morton, Richard L., 224

Morton, William, Sir, 12

Montgomery, J. S., Rev., 4

Montressor, 77

Mooney, Jas., 3, 4, 9

Moore, Asa, 45

Moore, Captain, 192

Moore, James, Dr., 217

Moore, John D., Mrs., x

Moore, M. Bernhard, 30

Moore, William, 69

Moraughtacund, 8

Morison, Murdock, 139

Morris, Governor, Pa., 86

Morris, Mahlon, 167

Morrisonville, 46

Morrisworth, 175, 204

Morven Park, 62, 177

Moryson, Francis, 14

Mosby, John S., Col., ix, 203, 213 et seq.

Mosby's Confederacy, 214, 218

Mosby's Rangers, 203, 214 et seq., 220

Mosco, 5, 6
[244]
Moss, John, 96, 102, 105, 113

Moss, John, Jr., 86, 111

Moss, William, 96

Mott, T. R., 183

Mott, Thos. B., Col., 230

Mount Defiance, 82

Mount Pleasant, 35

Mount Recovery, 82

Mount Vernon, 129

Moxley, John, 42

Mucklehany, John, 102

Munford, Col., 209

Murray, Mr., 188

Myers, Albert J., Major, 210

Myers, F. M., Capt., ix, 208

Myers, Mahlon, 204

Nahyssan, 9

Nalle, B. F., Mr. and Mrs., 102, 172

Nalle, Edward N., 229

Nantaughtacund, 6

Nanticoke, 9

National Portrait Gallery, xi

Necessary house, 111

Negroes, 12, 56, 59, 139, 141, 182, 185, 194, 203, 225

Neilson, Hugh, 131, 135

Nelson, Arthur, 120

Newport, Christopher, Sir, 11

Newspapers, 182

Nichols, Edw. H., 230

Nicholson, Governor, 21

Nixon, Asbury M., 223

Nixon, Lewis, 231

Noland, Charlotte H., Miss, 172, 173, 228

Noland family, 142

Noland House, 42, 62, 139

Noland, James, 125

Noland, Phillip, 42, 69, 72, 120, 173

Noland, Pierce, 178

Noland, Samuel, 128

Noland, Thomas, 121

Noland, William, 167

Noland's Ferry, 113, 120 et seq., 131, 139, 140, 217

Norbeck, Wm. F., 108

Norfolk System, 163

Nornail, Wm., 125

Norris, Samuel, 65

Northern Neck, (See also Proprietary), 9, 13, 14, 15, 32, 53, 65, 72, 73, 104, 114, 140

Northumberland County, 12, 99

Nottoways, 2

Numtaneuck, 9

Nuntally, 9

Oak Hill, x, xi, xii, 62, 178, etc., 191

Oatlands, 36, 62, 172, 231

Ockoquan River, 39, 67, 99

Ogden, David, 187

Ohio Company, 84

Oliphant, Sam'l, 127

O'Neal, Edward, 125

Oneale, Conn., 127

Opossum, 2

Orchards, Apple, 163, 228

Orchards, Peach, 130

Ordinaries, 62, 67, 104 et seq., 134, 228

Organization of County, 97

Orkney, Earl of, 27

Osburn, Craven, 168

Osburn family, 70

Osburn, Richard, 70

Otter, 2, 18

Overfield, Benj., 125

Owsley, John, 96

Ox Road, 67

Paeonian Springs, 65

Page, Frederick, Mrs., x

Page, Mann, 169, 176

Palatinate, 45

Palma, Valta, x

Parishes, 97

Parliament, (See Puritans), 12, 13, 57

Patterson, Flemming, 134

Patton, Francis, Mrs., 231

Paulus Hook, 143, 147, 148

Paxton, Chas., Mr. and Mrs., 226, 227

Paxton Memorial Home, 226, 227

Payne, Linwood, 230

Payne, Wm. H., Gen'l, 202

Payne's Church, 67

Peach Orchards, 130

Peers, H., 186

Peers, Mrs., 185

Penn, William, 49

Pepperell, Wm., Sir, 101

Perfect, Chro., 136

Perry, Micajah, 35

Petersburg, 153

Peugh, Sam'l, 125

Peyton, Francis, 102, 123, 125, 126, 166

Peyton family, 142

Pickett's Charge, 207

Piedmont Manor, 73

Pioneers, 31, 43

Piscataway Creek, 20

Piscataways, 20, 21, 24

Pittsburg, 83

Plantations, 1, 168

Plains, The, 20, 214

Plaster, (Land), 160 et seq.

Pleasanton, Gen'l, 217

Pleasanton, Stephen, 180

Plymouth Company, 11

Point of Rocks, 21, 42, 43, 74, 120, 175, 195

Point of Rocks Bridge, 120, 121, 196

Pope's Head, 70

Population, 72, 123
[245]
Postmasters, 179

Potomac Company, 159, 194

Potomac Islands, 26

Potomac River, 1, 20 etc., 25, 26, 29, 43, 65, 98, 120, 141, 159, 169, 195, 204, 208, 210, 219

Potomacs, 7

Potts, David, 47

Poultry, 228

Powell, Burr, 82, 166

Powell, Cuthbert, 174, 192

Powell, Elisha, 174

Powell family, 142, 174

Powell, Leven, Col., 81, 125, 126, 136, 159 166, 173, 174, 179

Powell, Lucian, 231

Powell, Mary, 174

Powell, Nathaniel, 5, 174

Powell, William, 81, 174

Powell, Winney, Miss, 174

Powell vs. Chinn, 81

Powhatans, 3, 6

Presbyterians, 51, 52, 114, 165

Price, Betsy, 74, 175

Prince William County, ix, 21, 39, 42, 71, 99, 141, 207

Primogeniture, 75

Prior, James, 167

Profiteers, War, 137

Proprietary, (also see Northern Neck), ix, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 32, 34

Purcell, Thos., 167

Purcell, Samuel, 167

Purcellville, 168, 218

Purcellville Library, 232

Puritans, 12, 13, 18

Putman, Herbert, Dr., 108

Quakers, viii, 32, 45, 47, 48, 78, 91, 92, 114, 123, 132, 166, 188, 201, 223

Quaker Settlement, 32, 49, 50, 70, 159, 185

Quantico, 71

Racoons, 2

Raiding parties, 212

Railroads, 195

Raleigh, Walter, Sir, 10, 11

Ramsay, Allan, xi

Rappahannock, 4, 5, 8, 9, 60, 99, 174

Raspberry Plain, 62, 74, 76, 77, 102, 103, 132, 170, 177, 188, 211

Ray, Thomas, 125

Reardon, John, 125

Reconstruction, 224 et seq.

Records, Colonial, ix

Records, County, ix, 102, 103, 106, 223

Records, U. S. to Leesburg, 180

Rectortown, 220

Red Cross, 229

Reed, Jacob, 126, 127

Reichel, John F., Bishop, 121

Religion, 114, 164

Respas, Thos., 128

Revolution, 30, 52, 59, 73, 76, 81, 103, 117, 119, 123 etc., 169

Reynolds, Joshua, Sir, xi

Richards, George, 187

Richardson, John, 42

Ridge Road, (See Alexandria Pike).

Riticor, Chas. C., Capt., 230

Roach, Mahlon, 167

Roads, Early condition of, 67

Roads, Bazzell, 125

Robey, Clarence, Mrs., 232

Robinson, Peter, 139

Robinson, William, 127, 139

Rock Spring, 184

Rockefeller, John D., Jr., viii

Rockland, xi, 62, 175, 210

Rogers, A. H., Lieut., 202

Rogers, Asa, Justice, 200

Rogers, John, 133

Rogers, William, Mrs., 204

Rogers, William H., Lieut., 202

Rogues Road, 61

Rokeby, 102, 172, 180

Rolling roads, 67

Roman Catholics, 43, 52, 232

Rosser, Thos. L., Col., 216

Round Hill, 168

Roundheads, See Puritans.

Roxbury Hall, 65

Rozell, Stephen, 117

Ruin of Loudoun, 220, 222

Russell, Anthony, 102, 126

Russell, Edward O., xii

Russell, Francis, 126, 127

Russell, John, 126

Russell, Robert, 127

Russell, Thomas, 187

Rust, Bryan, 230

Rust, E. Marshall, x, xii, 108

Rust, Elizabeth F., Miss, 176

Rust family, 142

Rust, George, 128

Rust, George, Gen'l, xi, 175, 176, 184, 192

Rust, Henry B., 108, 176

Rust, John Y., xi

Rust, Matthew, 124, 127

Rye, 163

Ryswick, Treaty of, 45

Saint James' Church, Leesburg, 165, 190, 227

Saint John's Church, Leesburg, 232

Salem, 214, 220

Salt, 133

Sanders, Isaac, 125

Sands, Daniel C., 227, 228

Sanitation, 163

Sangster, Adam, 125
[246]
Sapon, 9

Saratoga, Battle of, 139

Saunders, Presley, 179

Scalawags, 225, 226

Schlatter, Michael, Rev., 80

Schofield, John M., Gen'l, 224, 225

Schools, 171, 172, 173, 184, 192, 193, 231

Schooley, John, 179

Scotch, 44

Scotch, Irish, 45, 50, 114, 135, 166

Scotch Prisoners, 139

Sebastian, Benj., 104

Secession, 197

Secession Convention, 197

Secession Ordinance, 198

Second Colony, 2

Selden, Ann T., 176

Selden, Eleanor, 176

Selden, Mary M., 176

Selden, Mary T., 75

Selden, Samuel, 75

Selden, Wilson C., Dr., 176, 196

Selma, x, 62, 76, 170, 177, 188, 190, 230

Senecas, 16, 21, 24

Settlement, 31

Settlers, 95

Shakahonea, 6

Shannondale, 73

Sharp, Governor, Maryland, 86

Shaw, John, 179

Shawen, 187

Sheep, 228

Shelburne, Earl of, xi, 116

Shelburne, Glebe, 177, 196

Shelburne, Parish, x, xi, 116, 118, 196, 226

Shelburne Vestry, 196

Shelburne Vestry books, 164

Shenandoah Hunting Path, 60

Shenandoah River, 66, 84, 168, 219

Shenandoah Valley, 25, 37, 46, 99, 218

Sheridan, Philip, Gen'l, 218

Shimmer, Christian, 122

Shirley, Governor, Massachusetts, 86

Shoemaker, Basil W., 227

Shore, Richard, 126

Shore, Thos., 126

Short Hills, 1, 32, 46, 73

Shreve, Benj., 159

Shrieve, George, 127

Shrieves, William, 173

Shumaker, Ashton H., 230

Silver, 13, 130

Simpson, Geo. F., Dr., 233

Simpson, William, Capt., 207

Sims, Barney, 125

Sinclair, John, Sir, 161, 162, 167

Singleton, Joshua, 125

Sioux, 3

Slaves, 56, 59, 182, 185, 194

Smallwood, Henry G., 230

Smith, Fleet, 184

Smith, John, Capt., 2, 4, 5, 11, 15, 20, 174

Smith, John E., 230

Smith, Rufus, 223

Smith, Samuel, 128

Smith, Wethers, 127

Smith, William, 126

Smithsonian Institution, ix

Smitley, Matthias, 128

Snickers, Edward, 167

Snickers Ferry, 167

Snickers Gap, 168, 218, 229

Snickersville, 167, 214, 219, 229

Snickersville Road, 216, 220

Snider, Warner, Mr. and Mrs., 171

Soil improvement, 159 et seq.

Sorrell, Thos., 113

Southern Railway Company, 229

Spain, 10, 11

Spanish-American War, 227

Spanish Succession, War of, 45

Speake, Capt., 131

Spitzfathen, John, 127

Spooner, Chas., xi

Spotswood, Alex., Sir, 27 et seq.

Spotswood, Alex., Jr., 169

Spotswood, Catharine, 30

Spotswood Treaty, 24, 29, 99

Springwood, 62, 168

Stafford County, 21, 42, 71, 99

Stamp, William, 81

Stanton, E. M., 102

Stegarake, 4

Stegora, 6

Stephens, Wm., 96

Stephensburg, 111

Stevens, Lewis, 168

Stevens, Thos., 167

Stocks, 110

Stone, C. P., Gen'l, 205

Stone, Thos, 133

Stout, John L., 223

Stover, 46

Strahane, David, 23

Straughan, David, 24

Strictland, William, 161

Stuart, J. E. B., Gen'l, 208, 209, 214, 216, 217

Sugarland Run, 23, 25, 166

Sugarlands, 23, 37, 105

Summers, George, 126

Susquehannocks, 2, 9, 15, 16, 20, 24, 60

Sutton, Isaac, 79

Swann, Thos., Governor, 117

Swans, Wild, 26, 130

Swem, E. G., Dr., ix

Tacci, 9

Talbot, William, Sir, 8

Taliaferro, Elizabeth, 168

Tankerville, Earl of, 73, 122

Tavenner, Lott, 223
[247]
Taxuntania, 6

Tayler, John, 127

Tayloe, Rebecca, Miss, 104

Taylor, Henry S., 223

Taylor, Lawrence, 78

Taylor, William, 127

Taylor, Yardley, viii, 32, 47

Tebbs, Charles B., Col., 207

Tebbs, Edward H., Jr., Capt., 230

Tebbs, John A., Capt., 164

Temple Farm, 30

Terrick, Bishop, 119

Thatcher family, 82

Thatcher, John, 126

Thomas, David, 79

Thomas, Enoch, 128

Thomas, Evan, 106

Thomas, Henry W., Judge, 224

Thomas, Isaac, 188

Thomas, Jacob, 188

Thomas, John, 126

Thomas, Mahlon, 223

Thomas, Moses, 126

Thomas, Robert, 96

Thomas, Thomas, 129

Thompson, Edward, 84, 88, 90, 91

Thomson, Stevens, 75

Thomson, William, Sir, 75

Thorneley, Sam'l, xii

Thornton, John, 125

Thornton, Samuel C., 230

Thornton, Thomas, 81

Thoroughfare Gap, 217

Throckmorton, Mordecai, 168

Thurston, Thos., 49

Ticks, 92

Tidewater Virginians, 28, 43, 59, 65, 97, 114, 135, 159, 165, 166, 168

Tillett, Giles, 24

Tobacco as Money, 39, 98, 106, 110, 140

Tobacco planting, 53, 54, 162

Todhill, Anas, 5

Toleration Acts, 49, 52

Toulmin, Harry A., Lt. Col., 230

Towns, 166

Trammell, John, 69

Trammell, Samson, 128

Trammell, William, 96

Tribley, Joseph, 167

Triplett, Francil, 125

Triplett, Simon, 125, 127

True, Rodney H., 160

"True American," (newspaper), 164, 182

Trundle, Hartley H., 176

Trundle, Horatio, 176

Truro Glebe, 116

Truro Parish, 39, 68 etc., 72, 97, 116

Tuckahoes, (See Tidewater Virginians), 28

Turley, Giles, 128

Turner, Fielding, 102

Tuscaroras, 2

Tuscarora Creek, 63, 204

Tustin, Samuel, 187

Tyler, Charles, 102, 128

Tyler, George, 126

Tyson's Corner, 89

Ulster, Province of, 51

Union League, 225

Union men, 223

Union sentiment, 201

Union, Town of, 187

Unison, 228

Upperville Horse Show, 228

Valley Bank, xii, 183, 203

Valley Forge, 137

Vandercastel, Giles, 21, 24, 65

Vandevanter, Chas. O., 65

Vandevanter, Isaac, 126

Van Ingelgen, A. J., Rev., 232

Vernon, Admiral, 30

Vert's Corner, 62

Vestal family, 66

Vestal, G., 66

Vestal, John, 84

Vestal's Ferry, 66

Vestal's Gap, 66, 83, 84

Vestries, 68, 114

Vestry Books, 72, 117 et seq., 164

Victoria, Queen, 178

Vince, Thomas, 128

Virginia Historical Index, ix

Virginia Historical Society, ix

Virginia State Library, 117

Virginia, troops in French and Indian War, 87 etc., 96

Wagener, Mary E., 118

Wagener, Peter, Col., 118

Waggoner, Capt., 87, 95

Wallace, James M., 223

Walnut Cabin Branch, 70

Wampter, Capt., 207

War of 1812, 172, 179 et seq.

Warner's Crossroads, 65

Warrenton, 212

Washington, Augustine, 38, 80

Washington, City of, 20, 62, 172, 179, 194, 229

Washington, George, Gen'l, 30, 33, 38, 54, 66, 67, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 93, 119, 129, 136, 138, 142 etc., 159, 169

Washington, John A., 167, 176

Washington's Journal, 84

Washingtonian (Newspaper), 182

Waterford, 45, 47, 73, 78, 132, 137, 166 et seq., 187, 195, 202, 208

Wayne, Anthony, Gen'l, 141

Weidener, Chas., 185

Wenner, William, 80

West, George, 102, 104, 127, 128
[248]
West, Hugh, 104

West, John, 40

West, William, 70, 102, 105, 109, 112

West's Ordinary, 62, 67, 228

Westmoreland County, 99

Wetherby, 187

Whaley, James, Jr., 126

Wheat, 162, 167, 229

Wheatland, 65

Whig Party, 182, 197, 226

White, Bishop, 119

White, Elijah B., Col., 170, 230

White, Elijah B., Mrs., x, 177

White, Elijah V., Col., ix, 177, 203, 207 et seq., 211, 212

White, Elizabeth, Miss, x, 177

White, James, 138

White, Joel, 127

White, Josiah, 167

White, R. L., Gen'l, 205

White Plains, 218

White's Battalion, 208 etc., 215, 218

White's Ferry, 210

White's Ford, 210, 218

Whitney, John H., Mr. and Mrs., 174

Wiard, Michael, 223

Wickham, Williams C., Col., 216

Wigginton, Spence, 128

Wildey, John, 125

Wildman, Enos, 186

Wildman, Joseph, 127

Wilkinson, Thos., 179

Wilks, Francis, 96

William, III, 44, 58

William and Mary College, 104

William and Mary College Quarterly, ix

Williams, Abner, 166

Williams, John, 126, 166

Williams, Thomas, 125, 127

Williams, Thomas Burr, 223

Williamsburg, vii, 21, 29, 30, 125

Williams' Gap, 67, 70

Williamson, B., 187

Williamson, J. J., Rev., ix, 220, 221

Willock, James, 96

Wills Creek, 84, 86, 92

Winchester, 86, 92, 112, 166

Winder, Wm. H., Gen'l, 179

Wolfcaile, John, 167

Wolford, John, 223

Wolves, 2, 119

Wood, Waddy B., 231

Woody, William, 179

World War, 229

World War Monument, 229

Worsley, Lizzie, Miss, 63

Wyatt, Dudley, Sir, 12

York River, 8, 12

John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun Frontispiece	Face Page
Map of Loudoun County	1
Sir Alexander Spotswood	20
Sir Peter Halkett, Bart	83
The Fall of Braddock	93
William Petty-FitzMaurice	116
Nicholas Cresswell	129
Noland Mansion	139
Oatlands	171
Foxcroft	173
Rockland	175
General George Rust	176
Oak Hill	178
Oak Hill, East Drawing Room	179
Old Valley Bank	203
Battle of Ball's Bluff	205
Old John Janney House	226

"Alexandria 11th April 1755
.... March Rout of Sir Peter Halkett's Regiment from the
Camp at Alexandria to Winchester	miles
To Y^e old Court House	18
To Mr. Colemans on Sugar Land Run
where there is Indian Corn	12
To Mr. Miner's	15
To Mr. Thompson ye Quaker wh is 3000 wt. corn	12
To Mr. They's ye Ferry at Shanh	17
From Mr. They's to Winchester	23
	—
	97"

	l	s	d
To captain Nicholas Minor	1	00	00
[96]Aeneas Campbell, lieutenant,		7	6
Francis Wilks,	1	17
James Willock,	1	15
To John Owsley, and William Stephens,
15 s. each;	1	10
Robert Thomas		10
John Moss, Jun.		4
John Thomas for provisions		5
John Moss, do		2	8
William Ross, do		2	"

	l	s	d
"To Nicholas Minor, Captain	15	12	0
Josias Clapham, lieutenant,		7	16
William Trammell, ensign		5	4
To Captain James Hamilton his pay and
guards subsistence carrying soldiers
to Winchester	10	4	1"

	L	S	d
For a gallon of rum and so in proportion		8
Nantz Brandy Pr Gallon		10
Peach or Apple Brandy Pr Gallon		6
New England Rum Pr Gallon		2	6
Virginia Brandy from Grain Pr Gallon		4
Arrack the Quart made into Punch		8
For a Quart of White, red or Madeira Wine		2	6
For Royall and other low Wines Pr Quart		1	6
English Strong Beer Pr Quart		1	3
London Beer called Porter Pr Quart		1
[106]Virginia Strong Beer Pr Quart		7¹/₂
Cyder the quart Bottle		3³/₄
English Cyder the Quart	1	3
For a Gill of Rum made into Punch with loaf Sugar		6
Ditto with fruit		7¹/₂
For ditto with Brown Sugar		3³/₄
For a Hot Diet		9
For a Cold Diet		6
For a Gallon of Corn or Oats		4
Stableage & Fodder for a horse 24 hours or one night		6
Pasturage for a Horse 24 Hours or one night		4
For lodging with clean Sheets 6d. Otherwise nothing
All soldiers and Expresses on his Majesty's service paying
ready money shall have ¹/₅ part deducted.

Preface	vii
The Earlier Indians	1
England Acquires Virginia	10
The Passing of the Indians	20
Settlement	31
The Melting Pot	43
Roads and Boundaries	60
Speculation and Development	72
The French and Indian War	83
Organization of Loudoun and the Founding of Leesburg	97
Adolescence	114
Revolution	123
The Story of John Champe	142
Early Federal Period	159
Maturity	182
Civil War	198
Recovery	222
Index	235

John Morton	Thomas Williams
Thomas Ray	James Noland
Thomas Drake	Samuel Peugh
William Booram	William Nornail
Benj. Isaac Humphrey	Thomas Luttrell
Samuel Mills	James Brair
Joshua Singleton	Poins Awsley
Jonathan Drake	John Kendrick
Matthew Rust	Edward O'Neal
Barney Sims	Francil Triplitt
John Sims	Joseph Combs
Samuel Butler	John Peyton Harrison
Thomas Chinn	Robert Combs
Appollos Cooper	Stephen Combs
Lina Hancock	Samuel Henderson
John McVicker	Benjamin Overfield
Simon Triplett	Adam Sangster
Thomas Awsley	Bazzell Roads
Isaac Sanders	John Wildey
Thomas Williams	James Graydey
Henry Awsley	Joseph Bayley
Wm. Finnekin	John Reardon
Richard Hanson	Edward Miller
[126]
John Dinker	Richard Hirst
Jasper Grant	James Davis"[100]

Francis Peyton, Esq.	James Lane
Josias Clapham	Jacob Reed
Thomas Lewis	Leven Powell
Anthony Russell	William Smith
John Thomas	Robert Johnson
George Johnson	Hardage Lane
Thomas Shore	John Lewis

Donald McLeod	John Gunn
Donald Keith	Murdock Morison
John McLeod	Hugh McKay
William Kelly	John Forbas
Alexander McIntosh	William Robinson
John McLeod, Jr.	John McKay [111]
Peter Robinson

Precincts	For Secession	Against
Aldie	54	5
Goresville	117	19
Gum Spring	135	5
Hillsboro	84	38
Leesburg	400	22
Lovettsville	46	325
Middleburg	115	0
Mt. Gilead	102	19
Powells Shop	62	0
Purcellville	82	31
Snickersville	114	3
Union	150	0
Waterford	31	220
Waters	26	39
Whaleys	108	0
	——	——
Total	1626	726

1st Virginia Cavalry	Stribbling's Artillery
2nd Virginia Cavalry	Letcher's Artillery
4th Virginia Cavalry	Gillmore's Battalion
6th Virginia Cavalry	34th Va. Artillery
7th Virginia Cavalry	Loudoun Artillery
35th Va. (White's) Battalion	8th Virginia Infantry
43rd Va. Battalion (Mosby's Rangers)
1st Maryland Cavalry	17th Virginia Infantry
1st Richmond Howitzers	40th Virginia Infantry
Stuart's Horse Artillery	1st Georgia Infantry
Chew's Battery

Russell T. Beatty, Corp.	Frank Hough, Lt.
Charles A. Ball, Pvt.	Alexander Pope Humphrey, Pvt.
Charles E. Clyburn, Pvt.	Robert Martz, Pvt.
Thubert H. Conklin, Sgt.	Harry Milstead, Pvt.
Nealy M. Cooper, Pvt.	Judge McGolerick, Pvt.
Mathew Curtin, Pvt.	John O. McGuinn, Pvt.
Leonard Darnes, Wag.	Edward Lester Nalle, Pvt.
[230]Franklin L. Dawson, Pvt.	Ernest H. Nichols, Pvt.
John Flemming, Pvt.	Linwood Payne, Pvt.
Edward C. Fuller, Captain	Charles Carter Riticor, Capt.
Gilbert H. Gough, Pvt.	Ashton H. Shumaker, Pvt.
Grover Cleveland Gray, Corp.	Henry Grafton Smallwood, Pvt.
Leonard H. Hardy, Sgt.	John Edward Smith, Corp.
Bolling Walker Haxall Jr., Maj.	Valentine B. Johnson, Pvt.
Ernest Gilbert, Pvt.	Samuel C. Thornton, Pvt.

LEGENDS OF LOUDOUN

By HARRISON WILLIAMS

PREFACE

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

LEGENDS OF LOUDOUN

CHAPTER I

THE EARLIER INDIANS

CHAPTER II

ENGLAND ACQUIRES VIRGINIA

CHAPTER III

THE PASSING OF THE INDIANS

CHAPTER IV

SETTLEMENT

CHAPTER V

THE MELTING POT

CHAPTER VI

ROADS AND BOUNDARIES

CHAPTER VII

SPECULATION AND DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER VIII

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

CHAPTER IX

ORGANIZATION OF LOUDOUN AND THE FOUNDING OF LEESBURG

CHAPTER X

ADOLESCENCE

CHAPTER XI

REVOLUTION

CHAPTER XII

THE STORY OF JOHN CHAMPE

CHAPTER XIII

EARLY FEDERAL PERIOD

CHAPTER XIV

MATURITY

CHAPTER XV

CIVIL WAR

CHAPTER XVI

RECOVERY

INDEX

FOOTNOTES:

Transcriber's Note:

LEGENDS OF
LOUDOUN